Charity

Charity Len Deighton was trained as an illustrator at the Royal College of Art in London. His writing career began with The Ipcress File which was a spectacular success and was made into a classic film starring Michael Caine. Since then he has written many books of fiction and non-fiction. These include spy stories and war novels such as Goodbye Mickey Mouse and Bomber which the BBC recently made into a day-long radio drama in 'real time'. Last year Deighton's history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim — Jack Higgins called it 'an absolute landmark'. The first three Bernard Samson stories — Game, Set and Match — were made into an internationally aired thirteen-hour television series. These were followed by Hook, Line and Sinker. Deighton's latest novel, Charity, brings to a close the third Samson trilogy, Faith, Hope and Charity.

BY LEN DEIGHTON FICTION

NON-FICTION

The Ipcress File Horse Under Water Funeral in Berlin Billion Dollar Brain An Expensive Place to Die Only When I Larf Bomber Declarations of War Close-Up Spy Story Yesterday's Spy Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy SS-GB XPD Goodbye Mickey Mouse Mamista City of Gold Violent Ward

Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk Airshipwreck ABC of French Food Blood, Tears and Folly

THE SAMSON SERIES Berlin Game Mexico Set London Match Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945 Spy Hook Spy Line Spy Sinker Faith Hope Charity

LEN DEIGHTON ____________________________________________________

CHARITY

HarperCollins Publishers

HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

Special overseas edition 1997 This paperback edition 1997 135798642 First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996 Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company, BV 1996 ISBN 0 00 647900 6 This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters And incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Set in Sabon by Rowland Photosetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

AUTHOR'S NOTE The first three books of the Bernard Samson story, Game, Set and Match, are set in the cold war period from spring 1983 to spring 1984. Winter: A Berlin Family1899-1945 was the next in order of writing. The same places and the same people are to be found in it. Hook and Line take up the story from the beginning of 1987 and through the summer of that same year. Sinker uses a third-person narrative focusing on Fiona Samson. It tells the story from her point of view and reveals things that Bernard Samson still does not know. Faith, Hope and Charity continue the story. Faith starts in California as Bernard's terrible summer of 1987 turns cold. Hope follows it into the last weeks of 1987. Charity begins in the early days of 1988. Like all the other books, Charity is written to stand alone, and can be read without reference to the other stories. I thank my readers for their kindness, their generous encouragement and their patience. Writing ten books about the same group of people has proved a demanding labour but certainly a labour of love.

Len Deighton, Portugal, 1996.

I January 1988. The Moscow-Paris express train A bloated vampire moon drained all life and colour from the world. The snow-covered land came speeding past the train. It was grey and ill-defined, marked only by a few livid cottages and limitless black forest grizzled with snow. No roads; the railway did not follow any road, it cut through the land like a knife. I had seen enough of this cheerless country. I tugged the windowblind down, grabbing at a brass rubbish bin to keep my balance as the clattering train argued with a badly maintained section of track. Sometimes, at night, people also succumbed. Jim Prettyman's complexion, which had always been pale, was ashen under the dim overhead light. Inert on the top berth, a rosary dangling from his white-skinned hand; on the other a gold wedding ring and a massive gold Rolex wrist-watch indicating nine-thirty in the morning. It wasn't nine-thirty here for us. His watch had stopped. Or perhaps that was the right time in Moscow. We were a long way from Moscow, and for us it was still night. Jim stirred, as if my stare had disturbed his sleep. But his eyelids didn't move. He made a noise; a deep breath and then a stifled groan that ended in a subdued nasal snort as he snatched his arm down under the blanket and resumed his sleep. Jim was tough and wiry but his appearance had never been athletic. Mow his white face, with the vestigial eyebrows, made him look like a corpse prettified and readied for the relatives. Jim had picked up some kind of infection of the liver, or maybe it was the kidneys. The Russian hospital doctors said they could treat it, but, since their diagnosis varied from day to day according to what they were drinking with lunch, no one believed them. Some doctor the American embassy had on call wouldn't give a diagnosis; he just advised that Jim shouldn't be subjected to a plane trip. Rather than have him face any more treatment by Moscow's medics, Jim's American wife had wired the money for him to be evacuated by train and attended by a nurse. Jim's wife was a woman with considerable influence. She had arranged that her father in

the State Department sent a night-action fax to make sure the embassy people jumped to it. She wasn't with us; she had to host a Washington dinner party for her father. Although the paperwork for Jim's passage was being handled by the Americans, someone in London Central ordered that I should accompany him as far as Berlin. I was in Moscow at the time, and their message said it simply meant delaying my return by twenty-four hours. But going from Moscow to West Berlin by air was quite different to doing the same trip by train. By train I was going to encounter whole armies of nosy customs officials, security men and frontier police. Jim had a US passport nowadays, the nurse was Canadian and I was stuck with the German passport that I had used for my entry. With this cosmopolitan party I would have to cross Poland, and then travel across a large section of the German Democratic Republic, before getting to anywhere I could call home. Perhaps the people in London didn't appreciate that. There was sometimes good reason to think pen-pushers in the Foreign Office in Whitehall were still using nineteenth-century maps. I was looking at Jim, trying to decide how ill he really was, when there came a sudden sound, like a shovelful of heavy mud hitting a wall. The compartment rocked slightly. With no lessening of speed, the express thudded the air and sped between some empty loading platforms, leaving behind no more than an echoed gasp and a whiff of burned diesel. The train was packed. You could feel the weight of it as it swayed, and hear the relentless pounding of the bogies. The compartments of the wagon-lit had been booked for weeks. The cheaper coach seats were all filled and there were people sleeping amid the litter on the floor and propped between baggage in the corridors. Five rail cars were reserved for the army: hardy teenagers with cropped heads and pimples. Their kitbags and rifles were under guard in the freight car. Returning; to training camps after playing the sort of war games that didn't include time for sleep. Exhausted draftees. The fighting battalions had forsaken rifles long ago. Rifles were only for clumsy youngsters learning to drill. Further back in the train there were East European businessmen in plastic suits and clip-on ties; shrivelled old women with baskets heavy with home-made vodka and smoked pork sausage; stubble-chinned black-market dealers with used TV sets crammed into freshly printed cardboard boxes. Coming half-awake, Jim stretched out a red bony foot so that his toes pressed upon the metal divider that formed the side of a tiny clothes closet. Then he grabbed the edge of the blanket,

turned away and curled up small. 'Don't you ever sleep?' he growled drowsily. So he wasn't asleep and dreaming; he simply had his eyes closed. Perhaps that was the way Jim Prettyman had always fooled me. Long ago we'd been very close friends, one of a foursome made up with his petulant first wife Lucinda and my wife Fiona. We'd all worked for the Department in those days. Then Jim had been selected for special jobs and sent to work in corporate America as a cover for his real tasks. He'd changed jobs and changed wives, changed nationality and changed friends in rapid succession. He was not the sort of wavering wimp who let a good opportunity slip past while worrying who might get hurt. 'There's someone standing outside in the corridor,' I told him. 'The conductor.' 'No, not him. Our bad-tempered conductor has assumed tenancy of compartment number fifteen. And he's stinking fall-down drunk and will soon be unconscious.' 'Slide open the door and look,' Jim suggested. 'Or is that too easy?' His voice was croaky. 'You're the one who's dying,' I said. 'I'm the security expert. Remember?' 'Was there someone at the railway terminal?' he asked, before remembering to try and smile at my joke. When I made no move to investigate the corridor noise he repeated the question. 'Yes,' I said. 'Someone you recognized?' 'I'm not sure. It could be the same goon I had sitting in the lobby of my hotel.' 'Go man!' said Jim wearily. He closed his eyes tight, and, with a practised gesture, bound his rosary round his wrist in some signal of benediction. I went to the door, undid the catch and slid it open, unprepared for the bright moonlit countryside that was painted like a mural along the uncurtained windows of the corridor. There was a man there, standing a few steps away. He was about five feet six tall, with trimmed beard and neat moustache. His woollen Burberry scarf struck a note of affluence that jarred with the rest of his attire: the trenchcoat old and stained, and a black military-style beret that in Poland had become the badge: of the elderly veteran of long-ago wars. We looked at each other. The man gave no sign of friendliness nor recognition. 'How far to the frontier?' I asked him in my halting Polish. 'Half an hour; perhaps less. It's always like this. They are taking us on a long detour around the track repairs.'

I nodded my thanks and went back into my compartment. 'It's okay,' I told Jim. 'Who is it? Someone you know?' 'It's okay,' I said. 'Go back to sleep.' 'You may as well get some shut-eye too. Will the Poles come on and question us at the frontier?' 'No,' I said. Then, changing my mind: 'Maybe. It will be all right.' I wondered if the detour was really because of flood damage the way the press announcement said, or was there something at the frontier that the Soviets didn't want anyone to see?

*

I was regretting my ready agreement to take this train from Moscow back to my office in Berlin. I didn't have diplomatic status; they had wanted to supply me with a letter with the royal coat of arms at the top, asking everyone en route to be kind to us. That too was a legacy of the FO's nineteenth-century mentality. I had to point out to them that such a missive might look incongruous when carried by someone with a German passport accompanied by an American and a Canadian. I'd not objected to this task of escorting Jim, partly for old times' sake, partly because I'd heard that Gloria would also be in Moscow at that time and the delay would give me Two extra days with her. That was another fiasco. Her schedule was changed; she was leaving as I arrived. I'd only had time for one hurried lunch with Gloria, and that was marred by her interpreter arriving to collect her half an hour early, and standing over us with a watch in one hand, a coffee cup in the other, warning us about the traffic jams on the road to the airport. My brief moment with her was made more painful because she was looking more alluring than ever. Her long blonde hair was tucked up into a spiky fur hat, her complexion pale and perfect, and her large brown eyes full of affection, and devoted to me. Now I had plenty of time to regret my readiness to return by train. Now came the consequences. We were getting close to the Polish frontier, and I was not well regarded in the Socialist Republic of Poland. I had recognized the man in the corridor as 'Sneaky Jack', one of the hard men employed by our Warsaw embassy. I suppose London had assigned him to keep an eye on Jim. I had reason to believe that Jim's head was filled with the Department's darkest secrets, and I wondered what

Sneaky had been ordered to do if those secrets were compromised. Was he there to make sure Jim didn't fall into enemy hands alive? 'Where's that bloody nurse?' said Jim as I locked the sliding door. He turned over to look at me. 'She should be here holding my hand.' The nurse was a pretty young woman from Winnipeg, Canada. She was spending six months working in a Moscow hospital on an exchange scheme and had welcomed this opportunity to cut it short. She looked after Jim as if he was her nearest and dearest. Only when she was almost dropping from exhaustion did she retire to her first-class compartment along the corridor. 'The nurse has had a long day, Jim. Let her sleep.' I suppose he had sensed my anxiety. Jim had never been a field agent; he'd started out as a mathematician and got to the top floor via Codes and Ciphers. It was better if he didn't know that Sneaky was one of our people. And it was bad security to tell him. But if Jim ran into trouble and Sneaky had to tell him what to do . . . ? Oh, hell. 'In the corridor . . . little fellow with a beard. If we hit problems, and I'm not close by, do as he says.' 'You're not scared, are you, Bernard?' 'Me? Scared? Let me get at them.' Jim acknowledged my well-rehearsed imitation of my boss Dicky Cruyer by giving a smile that was restrained enough to remind me that he was sick and in pain. 'It will be all right,' I told him. 'With an embassy man outside the door they won't even come in here.' 'Let's play it safe,' he said. 'Get that nurse back here and in uniform, waving a thermometer or a fever chart or something. That's what she's here for, isn't it?' 'Sure. If that's what you want.' I felt that a man in Jim's situation needed reassurance but I was probably wrong about that as I was wrong about everything else that happened on that journey. I went along to find the nurse. I needn't have worried about disturbing her sleep. She was up and dressed in her starched white nurse's uniform, to which was added a smart woollen overcoat and knitted hat to keep her warm. She was drinking hot: coffee frcm a vacuum flask. Bracing herself against the rock and re 11 of the train, she poured some into a plastic: cup for me without asking if I wanted it. 'Thanks,' I said.

'I must look a sight in this stupid hat. I bought it for my kid brother, but I'm freezing cold. They don't have much heat on these trains.' I tasted the coffee. It was made with canned condensed milk and was very sweet. I suppose she liked it like that. I said: 'I've done this lousy journey a million times and I've never had the brains to bring a vacuum flask of coffee with me.' 'I brought six of these flasks,' she said. 'Vacuum flasks were about the only thing I could find in the Moscow shops that would make a useful gift for my aunts and uncles back home:. And they all expect a souvenir. Can you believe that they don't even have fridge magnets? I was looking for something with the Kremlin on it.' 'Moscow is not a great spot for shopping,' I agreed. 'It's a not a great spot for anything,' she said. 'Lousy climate, stinking food, surly natives. Getting out of there early was the best thing that happened to me in a long time.' 'Not everyone likes it,' I agreed. 'Personally there are quite a few towns I'd be happy to cross off my itinerary. Washington DC for a start.' 'Oh, don't say that. I worked in Washington DC for over a year. What parties they have there! I loved it.' 'By the way, the comrades who come climbing aboard at the frontier can be difficult about jewellery. I would tuck that sapphire brooch out of sight, if I were you.' 'Oh, this?' she said, fingering it on the lapel of her coat. 'Mr Prettyman gave it to me. I wanted to wear it, to show him J appreciated it.' Maybe she saw a question in my face, for she quickly added: 'It was a little present from Mr and Mrs Prettyman. His wife was on the phone. She asked him to give it to me. They are determined to believe I saved his life.' 'And you didn't?' 'I stopped the night-duty man cutting his appendix out, that night when he was admitted. It was a crazy diagnosis but I guess he would have lived.' She paused. 'Bui: that night: doctor was very crocked. And he was going to try doing it himself. The things I saw in that hospital, you would never believe. When I think about it, maybe I did save his life.' 'How sick is he?' 'He's bad. These kind of infections don't always respond to drugs . . . The truth is no one knows too much about them.' Her voice trailed away as she fiddled with the pin of her brooch, concerned that she had revealed too much about her patient. 'But don't worry. If anything

happened suddenly I could have him taken off in Berlin. The embassy people said Warsaw was not a good place.' She held the brooch in the palm of her hand and looked at it. 'It's a great keepsake. I like the kooky daisy shape; I've always loved daisies. I really appreciate it, but do you really think some Russkie is going to risk his career? He'd look kind of crazy, wouldn't he: snatching from a tourist like me a little silver-plated brooch with plastic sides and coloured brilliants?' She grinned mischievously. 'Want to look closer?' 'I don't have to look any closer,' I said, but I took it from her anyway. 'It's not a flower, not a daisy, it's an antique sunburst pattern. And that's not black plastic, it's badly tarnished silver, with yellow gold on the back. The big, luminous, faintly blue stone in the centre is a top-quality sapphire; maybe thirty carats. It's been neglected: badly rubbed with scratches, bur that could all be polished away. All those "coloured brilliants" that punctuate each ray of it are matched diamonds pave set.' 'You've got to be kidding.' 'The fastening is a simple pin, without safety catches. It's antique . . . well over a hundred years old. It's worth a pile of money.' 'Golly. Are you sure? Where did you learn so much about jewellery?' 'Back in the Sixties, in Berlin, they were tearing down some old houses in Neustadt. The bulldozer pushed a wall down and found a secretly bricked-up part of the cellar. It was full of crates and metal boxes. My father was Berlin security supremo for the British. He had to take charge of it. He tried to get out of it but some of the valuables were marked with labels from the Reichsbank. That opened a whole can of worms . . .' I stopped. 'I'm sorry, I'm being a bore.' I gave her the brooch. 'No, you're not. I want to hear.' She was examining the brooch carefully. 'I don't know anything about the war and the Nazis, apart from what I've seen back home in movies.' 'Gold, silver, coins, foreign paper money including pounds and dollars. And boxes of jewellery and antique cutlery and stuff; most of it solid silver. The Reichsbank labels made it political. The SS had stored their loot in the Reichsbank. So did Göring and some of the others. It could have been the property of the Federal Republic, or it might be claimed by the governments of countries the Nazis took over in the war. Some of the jewellery was thought to be part of the family jewels of the House of Hesse that were stolen by American soldiers in 1945. In other words no one had the slightest idea what it all was. The first job was to have it all listed and

itemized, so the descriptions could be circulated. My father had three experienced Berlin jewellers going through it. It was in the old swimming hall in Hauptstrasse in Schöneberg. A big barn of a place, made of shiny white tiles, derelict at that time but still faintly smelling of chlorine and bleach. Folding tables from the army canteen were set up in the drained pool; the jewels and silver and stuff were all arranged on them and there were big printed numbers marking each item. I can see it now. There were cops sitting on the three-metre diving board looking down at us. My Dad told me to keep my eyes open and make sure the jewellers didn't steal anything.' I drank some coffee. 'And did they steal anything?' 'I was very young. I'm not sure if they did or not, but in those days Germans were scrupulously honest; it was one of the aspects of Berlin I took for granted until I went elsewhere. These old jewellers showed me each piece before they wrote out the description. It went on for four and a half days. For me it was an intensive course in jewellery appraisal. But I've forgotten half of it. That stone is cut as der Achteck-Kreuzschliff. I only know the German word for it. I suppose it means an octagonal crosscut. The sapphire is a cushion cut; quite old.' 'What happened to all the treasure?' 'I'm not sure. What I remember is having to decipher the handwriting — some of it in old German script — and type it out, with eight carbon copies. It took me a week. And I remember how happy my father was when he finally got a signature for it.' 'That's quite a story,' she said. 'I've never owned real jewellery before. Now if you would kindly turn around and avert your eyes, I shall tuck my valuable brooch into my money belt.' The express slowed as we neared the frontier, and then, after a lot of hissing and puffing of brakes and machinery, crawled slowly into Soviet Russia's final western outpost, where floodlamps on tall posts swamped the checkpoint area with dazzling light. Like foamy water, it poured down upon the railway tracks and swamped the land. A freight train, caked in mud, was still and abandoned; a shunting engine was steamy and shiny with oil. At its shadowy edge I could see the barrack blocks or the local frontier battalion and their guard towers. Under the fierce lighting, star-shaped shadows sprang from the fest of the sentries, railway officials, immigration and customs men. The lights illuminated every last splash of icy sludge on the army trucks that were awaiting the Soviet draftees. The soldiers alighted first, in a frenzy of shouting,

saluting and stamping of feet. Then there came the noise of the army's well-used railway cars being uncoupled and shunted off to a distant siding.

*

Inside the express train there was an almost interminable processing of paperwork by Soviet officials whose demeanour ranged from officious to witless. They gave no more than a glance at the paperwork for our party. I got a mocking salute, the girl a leer, and Jim's inert form a nod. Eventually the train started again. It slid out of the brightly lit frontier area, and, with many stops and starts, we clanked across the frontier to where the Poles — and another checkpoint — awaited us. Here the lights were less bright, the armed soldiers less threatening. I stood in the corridor watching the whole circus. Fur hats bobbed everywhere. The soldiers climbed aboard first. Then the ticket inspector came, and then the customs officer, and then two immigration inspectors with an army officer in tow, and a security official in civilian clothes. It was a long process. An elderly English woman came shuffling along the train corridor. She was wearing a raglan style camel-hair coat over a nightdress. Her greying hair was dishevelled, and she clutched a bulging crocodile-skin handbag tightly to her breast. I'd noticed her on the platform at Moscow, where she'd got into an argument with a railway official about the seats assigned to her and the teenage boy with whom she was travelling. 'The soldiers have arrested my son,' she told me in a breathless croak. She was distressed,, almost hysterical, but controlling her emotions in that way that the English do in the presence of foreigners. 'He's such a foolish boy. They discovered a political magazine in his shoulder bag. I want to go with him and sort it out, but they say I must continue my journey to Berlin because I have no Polish visa. What shall I do? Can you help me? I heard you speaking Polish and I know you speak English.' 'Give the sergeant some Western money,' I said. 'Do you have ten pounds in British currency?' ' She touched her loosened hair, and a lock of it fell across her face. 'I didn't declare it.' She mouthed the words lest she was overheard. 'It's hidden. She nervously flicked her hair back, and then with a quick movement of her fingers secured it with a hairclip that seemed to come from nowhere.

'It's what they want,' I said. 'Give them ten pounds sterling.' 'Are you sure?' She didn't believe me. She had become aware of her unladylike appearance by now. Selfconsciously she fastened the top button of her coat against her neck. 'Why else would they let you come here and talk with me?' I said. She frowned and then smiled sadly. 'I see.' The sergeant,' I said. 'Take the sergeant to one side and give it to him. He will share it with the officer afterwards, so that no one sees it. If things go wrong the sergeant gets all the blame. It's the way it works.' 'Thank you.' With as much dignity as she could muster in a frilly nightdress and scuffed red velvet slippers, she hurried off back to her compartment. The door was opened for her when she got there and the sergeant poked his head out and looked at me. I smiled. Expressionless he drew his head back in again. More uniformed officials came crawling along the train; resolute and unfriendly like a column of jungle ants. But the Polish security man who took me into the conductor's compartment at the end of the carriage was an elderly civilian, a plump man with untidy wavy hair, long and untidy enough to distinguish him from the soldiers. He was wearing a red-striped bow tie and belted brown corduroy overcoat. He scanned my passport with a battery-powered ultra-violet light. There was nothing wrong with my papers — it was a genuine German Federal Republic document — but he ignored the name in my passport and said: 'Welcome to Poland, Mr Samson.' If they knew who I was, they knew what I did for a living. So they were not to be persuaded that I was an advertising executive from Hamburg. He didn't give the passport back: instead he put it in his pocket. That was always a bad sign. He questioned me in German and in English. He told me his name was Reynolds and that his father was English, and born in Manchester. The Poles all had an English relative up their sleeve, just as the English like to keep an Irish grandmother in reserve. I pretended not to understand English. Reynolds told me all over again in German. He was very patient. He smoked cheroots and kept referring to a bundle of documents that he said were all devoted to me and my activities. It was a thick folder, and once or twice it looked as if the whole lot of loose pages would end up cascading to the floor of the train, but he always managed to save them at the last moment.

I told him that it was a simple case of mistaken identity. Mr Reynolds lit a fresh cheroot from the butt of his old one and sighed. Another ten minutes passed in fruitless questions, and then they escorted me off the train. Sneaky Jack did nothing except stand around in the corridor, getting a glimpse of me through the door now and again, and overhearing as much as he could. I didn't blame him. He was no doubt assigned to look after Jim. Solving the predicaments of a supernumerary field agent like me was not something upon which his career would hang. As far as I could see I was the only person being removed from the train. I jumped down and felt the chill of the hard frozen ground through the soles of my shoes. It was darker now; the moon was hiding behind the clouds. They didn't handcuff me. I followed the two soldiers — a sergeant standard-bearer and a trumpeter, if the badges on their arm were taken seriously. We crossed the tracks, stepping high over the rails and being careful not: to stumble as we picked our way through piles of broken sleepers and other debris. Mr Reynolds was breathing heavily by the time we climbed the embankment. We waited for him to catch up. I looked back at the train. There was lots of noise and steam, and all the squeaky commotion that is the ritual of trains as they prepare to move. The yellow blind of Jim's compartment went up, and the nurse was framed in the window. There was condensation on the glass and she wiped a clear patch with her hand. She looked this way and that, but it was too dark for her to spot me. She wasn't a Departmental employee, just a Canadian nurse engaged to accompany a casualty to London. Having a travelling companion suddenly disappear was no doubt disconcerting for her. I stood shivering alongside Reynolds and his soldiers and we all watched the train pull away slowly. When it had disappeared the night was dark and I felt lonely. I looked the other way: back across the frontier to the Soviet checkpoint half a mile distant. It was still bathed in light but all the frantic activity there had ceased: the army trucks and the officials had disappeared. The lights were still glistening upon the oval of hardened snow, but the only movement was the measured pacing of a single armed sentry. It was like some abandoned ice-hockey stadium from which teams and spectators had unaccountably fled. 'Let's go,' said Reynolds. He flicked the butt of his cheroot so that it went spinning away in red sparks. Before I could react the sergeant hit me spitefully in the small of the back with the met d butt of his gun. Caught off guard, I lost my balance. At first I slipped and then, as my knees buckled

under me, I tumbled down the embankment with arms flailing. At the bottom there was a drainage ditch. The thick ice cracked and my foot went through it into cold muddy water. When I got back on my feet I was wet and dirty. There was a wind that shook the trees and cut me to the bone. I wished I'd put my overcoat on before leaving the compartment to go and answer their questions. After five minutes stumbling through the dark, there was the sound of a diesel engine starting and then the headlights of a dark green army truck lit up a narrow road and trees.

*

They didn't take me to Warsaw or to any other big town. The truck bumped along country roads while the crimson dawn crept out from the woodland. The sky was beginning to lighten as we arrived at the grim-looking castle in Mazury. Without anything much being said they locked me in a room there. It was not a bad room; I had endured worse accommodation in Polish hotels. The worrying thing was our proximity to Rastenburg, where I'd recently shot some Polish UB men and not gone back to feel their pulse. Thinking about that made it a long time before I went to sleep. The man who liked to be called Reynolds was apparently in charge of me. He came to see me next morning and directly accused me of killing two security officials while evading arrest. Reynolds talked a lot, and continued talking even when I did not respond. He told me I would be held and tried here in the military district headquarters. In the course of the investigation, and subsequent court martial, the army witnesses, prosecutors and judges would go and visit the place where my crime took place. He didn't mention anything about a defence counsel. The second day was Wednesday. He questioned me all the morning and into the afternoon, and accused me of not taking the charges seriously. I didn't admit to any of it. I said I was German but he didn't believe me. 'You think your government is now strenuously applying for your release through diplomatic channels, do you not?' I looked at him and smiled. He didn't know much about my government, or its diplomatic service, or he would have known that having them do anything strenuously was far beyond reasonable expectations.

'You've nothing to smile about,' said Reynolds, banging his flattened hand upon a dossier lying on the table. How right he was. 'I demand to see the consul from the embassy of the German Federal Republic,' I said. I'd made the same demand many times, but on this occasion he became angry and rammed his cheroot down hard so that it split apart in tie ashtray. 'Will you stop repeating that stupid cover story?' There was real anger in his voice. 'We know who you are. The Germans have never heard of you.' Perhaps it was because he'd missed lunch. They had me in a rambling old fortress that Reynolds called the citadel. It was the sort of fairy castle that Walt Disney would have built on a mountain-top, but this was a region of lakes and marshland and the prominence upon which the castle stood was no more than a hillock. The buildings that made up the complex provided a compendium of fortification history: twelfth-century dungeons, a keep almost as old, and a seventeenth-century tower. There were three cobbled yards, the one beneath my window crowded with ramshackle wooden huts and other structures that the German army had added when it became a regional school of military hygiene during the Second World War. The walls were thick and castellated, with a forbidding entrance gate that had once housed a drawbridge. The top of the walls provided a path along which armed sentries patrolled as they had no doubt done for centuries. To what extent the poor wretches slapping themselves to keep warm were there because the army thrives on sentry duty and guard changes, or to warn of approaching danger, was hard to decide. But in this eastern frontier region at that time, the prospect of a Soviet invasion was never far from anyone's mind. Some Moscow hard-liners were proclaiming that the Poles had gone too far with their reforms, and the only way to maintain communist power throughout the Eastern Bloc was by a brotherly show of Soviet military repression. Whether they were reformers, communists or khaki-clad philanthropists, the military government in Warsaw wouldn't welcome Soviet spearhead armour lunging across the border. Perhaps that was why this enlarged battalion of Polish infantry was garrisoned here, and why their day began at five-thirty with a flag-hoisting ceremony, accompanied by a drummer and that sort of discordant trumpeting that drives men into battle. And why the congregation that lined up at the subsequent Holy Mass was in full battle-order.

They had brought my suitcase off the train. In my presence they'd unlocked it and searched through its contents and photographed selected items. Now the case was open and placed on a low table in my room. They found nothing incriminating, but I didn't like this development. The suitcase, the photos, the polite questions, and everything else they did, smelled like preparations for a public trial. Were you ill-treated? No. Were you tortured? No. Were you properly fed? Yes. Were you given a comfortable room? Yes. Were these answers given freely and without coercion? That's the sort of dialogue I smelled in the air, and I didn't like the prospect one bit. My third-floor window looked down upon a small inner yard. Beyond it there was the main courtyard, where the morning and evening parade took place. My room wasn't a cell. They weren't giving me the thumbscrews, rack and electric shocks treatment. They didn't take away my watch and seal off the daylight to disorient me, or try any of the textbook tricks like that. The only torture I suffered was when Reynolds blew cigarette smoke in my face, and that was more because it reminded mi: of the pleasures of smoking than because I was overcome by the toxic fumes. The room they'd given me high up in the tower also smelled of ancient tobacco smoke. It smelled of mould and misery too. Its thick masonry was cold like ice, whitewashed and glistening with condensation. On the wall a plastic crucifix was nailed and on the bed there were clean sheets; frayed, patched, hard, grey and wrinkled. A small wooden table had one leg wedged with a wad of toilet paper. On the table half a dozen sheets of notepaper and two pencils had been arranged as if inviting a confession. Fixed to the wall above the table there was a shelf holding a dozen paperbacks; Polish best-sellers, some German classics, and ancient and wellread Tauchnitz editions in English: Thomas Hardy and A. E. W. Mason. I suppose Reynolds was hoping to catch me reading one of the books in English, but he never did. It took too long to get the massive lock turned, and I always heard him coming. There was a water radiator too: it groaned and rattled a lot, but it never became warmer than blood heat, so I kept a blanket around my shoulders. A great deal of my time was spent staring out of the window. My small inner yard was cobbled, and in the corner by the well lay a bronze statue. The statue had been cut from its pediment by a torch which had melted its lower legs to prong-like petals. Face down, this prone warrior waved a cutlass in one final despairing gesture. I never discovered the identity of this twice-fallen trooper, but he was clearly considered of enough political

significance to make his outdoor display a danger to public order. While only a small section of the main yard was exposed to my view, I could see the rear of the officers' mess where half a dozen fidgety horses were unceasingly groomed and exercised. Early each morning, fresh from a canter, they were paraded around the yard, snorting and steamy. Once, late at night, I saw two drunken subalterns exchanging blows out there. Thus the limited view of the yard and the exposed secrets of the officers' mess was like that provided by the cheap fauteuil seats, high up in a theatre balcony, the obstructed view of the stage made up for by the chance to see the backstage activity behind the wings. I saw the padre preparing for Mass in the half-light of early morning. I saw two men plucking countless chickens so chat the feathers blew around like smoke, and during meal-times the mess servants would sometimes emerge for a moment to covertly upend a bottle of wine. The bigger yard was equally active. For most of the daylight hours it was filled with young soldiers who jumped and ran and reached high in the air at the commands of two physicaltraining instructors. The trainees were dressed in khaki singlets and shorts, and they moved furiously to keep warm in the freezing air. The instructors ran past my line of vision, shadowboxing as if unable to contain their limitless energy. When in the afternoon the final company of men had completed their physical training, the sun would come out of hiding. Its cruel light showed up the dust and cobwebs on the window glass. It set the forest ablaze and edged the battlements with golden light, leaving the courtyard in cold blue shadow, luminous and shimmering as if it was filled to the brim with clear water. My room was no less comfortable than those assigned to the junior officers who shared the same landing with me. Often, when I was on my way to the washroom and toilet, or when Reynolds was taking me downstairs to his office, I caught sight of smartly uniformed subalterns. They looked at me with undisguised curiosity. Later I discovered that a security company used part of the 'citadel' for training courses, and the officers had been selected for politically sensitive duties supervising municipal authorities. For Poland was a land governed by its soldiers. I was punched and slapped a few times. Never by Reynolds. Never when Reynolds was present. It happened after he became exasperated by my smartass answers. He would puff at his cheroot, sigh and leave the office for ten minutes or so. One or other of the guards would give me a couple of blows as if on his own account. I never discovered if it was done on Reynolds's orders, or even with his knowledge. Reynolds was not vicious. He was not a serious interrogator,

which was probably why he'd been assigned to this military backwater. He wasn't expecting me to reveal any secrets that would raise questions in Warsaw, or even raise eyebrows there. Reynolds was content to do his job. He asked me the same questions every day; changing the order and the syntax from time to time but not waiting too long for a reply. Usually the final part of the day's session would consist of Reynolds telling me about his sister Hania and his lazy good-for-nothing brother-in-law, and the wholesale delicatessen business they owned in Detroit. On Friday afternoon the wild dropped and the trees were unnaturally still From under low grey cloud the sun's long slanting rays hit the battlements. A sentry stepped forward and stood fully in the light to capture the meagre warmth. Watching him I noticed a flickering in the air. Tiny golden pin-pricks, like motes of dust caught in a cathedral interior. Snowflakes: the winter had returned. As if in celebration, from one of the rooms along the corridor Tauber burst into a scratchy tenor rendering of 'Dein ist mein games Herz.' He sounded terribly old. By morning the snow was no longer made of gold. It had spread a white sheet across the land, and my bronze warrior was dusted with it. It didn't stop. By Saturday evening the snow covered everything. I heard the grinding sounds of the trucks that brought sentries back from guard duty at the nearby radar station. They came in low gear, their engines growling and their wheels intermittently spinning on the treacherously smooth section of roadway that was the approach to the main gate. The snow had blown across my yard, to form deep drifts along the wall, and the bronze warrior was entombed in it. I opened the window and put my head out into the stinging cold. The world was unnaturally hushed with that silence that such snow always brings. Then I heard shouting and saw an agitated sentry aiming his gun at me. I pulled my head in and closed the window. Happy to see such a quick response he waved his gun and laughed so that his happiness condensed on the cold air. On Wednesday night, after five days in custody, a soldier came for me in the middle of the night. I recognized him as one of the PT instructors. He was a wiry fellow with the inscrutable face that seems to go with gymnasts, as if prolonged exercise encourages the contemplative condition. He led me down the back stairs and through a part of the building I'd not seen before. We passed through the muggy kitchens and a succession of storerooms that had once been cellars. Finally he indicated that I should precede him. As I bent my head under the low doorway, he hit me in the small of the back. He followed that with another punch that found the kidneys and sent a jolt of pain though my body from heel to

head. It was like an electric shock and my mind blanked out as I contended with the intense pain. I fell like a tree. It was dark, but there was another man in the darkness. He came from the shadows and caught me, giving me a couple of hard jabs in the belly thai: brought my supper up into my mouth. I tucked my head down and tried to cover myself from their blows but they weren't deterred, nor inconvenienced. These two were experts. They worked on me systematically as if I was a side of beef being readied for the stewpot. After a few minutes one of them was taking my whole weight, holding me up to be punched. When he let go of me I crashed to the stone floor only half-conscious. I couldn't think straight. Every part of my body was singing with pain. Under me I could feel coarse matting, and, reaching beyond its edge, smooth pavement. I moved enough to press my face against the cold stone. I vomited and tasted blood in my mouth. The two men stood over me watching; I could see a glint of light, and their shoes. Then they went away, satisfied no doubt with the job they'd done. I heard their footsteps fade but I didn't try to get up. I pressed my head against a bag of onions. At the bottom of the sack, rotten onions had fermented to become a foul-smelling liquid that oozed through the sacking. I blacked o at and then came conscious several times. Despite the stench I remained there full-length for a long time before very very slowly rolling and snaking across the floor, slowly getting my back against the wall and inch by inch sitting up. No bones were broken; no bruises or permanent marks on my face. Theirs was not a spontaneous act of brutality or spite. They had been assigned to hurt me, but not permanently cripple me, and they'd done their job nicely. No hard feelings, chaps, it's all in a day's work for a soldier serving in a land ruled by generals. Lucky me that they hadn't been told to tear me limb from limb, for I'm confident they would have done it with the same inscrutable proficiency. Having decided that, I lost consciousness again Someone must have carried me up to the room in the tower. I don't remember anything of it but I certainly didn't get there unassisted. But why, after a week of Mister Nice-guy, suddenly take me out of my bed and beat the daylights out of me without interrogation or promises? There was only one explanation and it slowly became clear to me. Some higher authority had ordered my release. This was Mr Reynolds's tacit way of protesting that decision, and saying farewell to me. Higher authority was satisfied, I suppose. The generals in Warsaw were not trying to provoke World War Three. They just: wanted to show their opposite numbers in London that they didn't

like nosy strangers coming into their territory and doing the sort of things I'd done last Christmas at Rastenburg. They didn't want me demonstrating short-take-off-and-landing aircraft after dark, and kidnapping useful Polish spies. They didn't like me torching shiny new government-owned Volvo motor-cars which were in short supply in Poland in 1987. And they didn't like the way I'd shot and wounded Polish security men who, having failed to stop me, had made sure that arrestand-detain notices were posted throughout the land. Well, that was my mistake; I should have killed the bastards.

*

Reynolds put me on the train the next night. He took me to the station in a car, talking all the time about his sister in America and pretending not to notice that his men had almost beaten the life out of me. It was the same Moscow-to-Paris express train, on the same day of the week. They even put me back into a compartment with the same number. My overcoat — which I'd not seen during my incarceration — was folded and stowed on the rack. Pointedly my passport was balanced on the small basket the railway provides for rubbish. Everything was the same, except that Jim and his nurse were not there. The train compartment was warm. Outside it was snowing again. Wet dollops of it were sliding down the window glass. I slumped on the berth and stretched out. The pain of my beating had not abated and my clothes still had the sickening odour of putrid onions. My bruises and grazes were at that stage of development when the pain is at its most acute. I closed my eyes. I couldn't even raise enough strength to get up and slide the door closed. From the compartment next door I heard the raised voices of a young American couple arguing with a soldier. They say it's a political magazine,' said the woman. She had a nice voice, with the sort of musical Boston accent that the Kennedy family made patrician. 'I never saw it before,' said the man. Then he repeated his denial loudly and in German. There was a moment of silence, then the woman coughed and the man gave a short angry laugh. I heard my door slide open. I half-opened my eyes and a Polish officer stepped inside to stare down at me. Then the sergeant joined him and the two of them moved on along the corridor. I suppose the American couple had picked up the local traditions without my assistance.

Some extra railway coaches were shunted and coupled to our train with a rattle and a jarring that shook me to the core. Then, after a great deal of whistling and shouted orders, the train clattered forward. I pulled the pillow over my ears.

2 The SIS residence, Berlin 'That bloody man Kohl,' said Frank Harrington, speaking with uncustomary bitterness about the German Federal Republic's Chancellor. 'It's all his doing. Inviting that bastard Honecker to visit the Republic has completely demoralized all decent Germans — on both sides of the Wall.' I nodded. Frank was probably right, and even if he hadn't been right I would have nodded just as sagely; Frank was my boss. And everywhere I went in Berlin I found despondency about any chance of reforming the East German State, or replacing the stubbornly unyielding apparatchiki who ran it. Just a few months before — in September 1987 — Erich Honeckei, Chairman of East Germany's Council of State, Chairman of its National Defence Council and omnipotent General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, had been invited on a State visit to West Germany. Few Germans — East or West — had believed that such a shameless tyrant could ever be granted such recognition. 'Kohl's a snake in the grass,' said Frank. 'He knows what everyone here thinks about that monster Honecker but he'll do anything to get re-elected.' Kohl had certainly played his cards with skill. Inviting Honecker to visit the West had been a political bombshell that Kohl's rivals found difficult to handle. The Saarland premier — Oskar Lafontaine — had been misguided enough to pose with the despised Honecker for a newspaper photo. The resulting outcry dealt Lafontaine's Social Democrats a political setback. This, plus some clever equivocations, patriotic declarations and vague promises, revived the seemingly dead Chancellor Kohl and reaffirmed him in power. Those who still hoped that Honecker's visit to the West would be marked by some reduction of tyranny at home asked him to issue orders to stop his border guards shooting dead anyone who tried to escape from his bleak domain. 'Fireside dreams are far from our minds,' he said. 'We take the existence of two sovereign states on German soil for granted.'

'Kohl and his cronies have taken them all for a ride,' I said. The 'Wessies' viewed Kohl's political manipulation of the Honecker visit with that mixture of bitter contempt and ardent fidelity that Germans; have always given to their leaders. On the other side of the Wall the 'Ossies', confined in the joyless DDR, were frustrated and angry. Grouped around TV sets, they had watched Kohl, and other West German politicians, being unctuous and accommodating to their ruthless dictator, and blithely proclaiming that partition was a permanent aspect of Germany's future. 'It aged Strauss ten years, that visit,' said Frank. I could never tell when he was joking; Frank was not noted for his humour but his jokes were apt to be cruel and dark ones. From his powerbase in Munich, Franz Josef Strauss had proclaimed something he'd said many times before: The German Reich of 1945 has legally never been abolished; the German question remains open.' It was not what Honecker wanted to hear. He might have won Kohl over, but Strauss remained Honecker's most effective long-term critic. We were downstairs in Frank's house in Grunewald, the home that came with the post of Head of Station in Berlin. It was late afternoon, and the dull cloudy sky did little to make the large drawing-room less sombre. Yellow patches of light from electric table-lamps fell upon a ferocious carpet of bright red and green flowers. A Bechstein grand piano glinted in one corner. Upon its polished top, rank upon rank of family photos paraded in expensive frames. Playing centre-forward for this team stood a silver-framed photo of Frank's son, a one-time airline pilot who had found a second career as a publisher of technical aviation books. Behind the serried relatives there was a cut-glass vase of long-stem roses imported from some foreign climate to help forget that Berlin's gardens were buried deep under dirt-encrusted snow. All around the room there were Victorian paintings of a sooty and hazy London: Primrose Hill, the Crystal Palace and Westminster Abbey all in heavy gilt frames and disappearing behind cracked and darkening coach varnish. Arranged around a polished mahogany coffee table there were two big uncomfortable sofas in blue damask, and three wing armchairs with matching upholstery. One of these Frank kept positioned exactly facing the massive speakers of his elaborate hi-fi system, its working parts concealed inside a birchwood Biedermeier tallboy that had been disembowelled to accommodate it. Sometimes Frank felt bound to explain that the tallboy had been badly damaged before suffering this terminal surgery.

Frank was relaxed in his lumpy chair. Thin elegant legs crossed, a drink at his elbow and a chewed old Dunhill pipe in his mouth. From time to time he disappeared from view behind a sombre haze, not unlike the coach varnish that obscured the views of London, except for its pungent smell. After a period of denial, which had caused him — and indeed everyone who worked with him — mental and physical stress, he'd now surrendered to his nicotine addiction with vigour and delight. 'I read the report,' said Frank, removing the pipe from his mouth and prodding into it. bowl with the blade of a Swiss army penknife. Seen like this, in his natural habitat, Frank Harrington was the model Englishman. Educated but not intellectual, a drinker who was never drunk, his hair greying and his bony face lined without him looking aged, his impeccably tailored pinstripe suit not new, and everything worn with a hint of neglect: the appearance and manner which knowing foreigners so often admire and rash ones imitate.

*

I sipped my whisky and waited. I had been summoned to this meeting in Frank's home by means of a handwritten memo left on my desk by Frank in person. Only he would have fastened it to my morning Berliner doughnut by means of a push-pin, Such formal orders were infrequent, and I knew I'd not been brought here to hear Frank's views on the more Byzantine stratagems of Germany's political adventurers. I wondered what was really in his mind. So far there had been little official reaction to my delayed return to Berlin, and! the detention in Poland that caused it. When I arrived I reported to Frank and told him I'd been arrested and released without charges. He was on the phone when I went into his office. He capped the phone, mumbled something; about my preparing a report for London, and waved me absent. I resumed my duties as his deputy, as if I'd not been away. The written report I had submitted was brief and formal, with an underlying inference that it was a matter of mistaken identity. I was sitting on one of the sofas in an attempt to keep my distance from the polluting product of Frank's combustion. Before me there was a silver tray with a crystal ice bucket, tongs, and a cut-glass tumbler into which a double measure of Laphroaig whisky had been precisely measured by Tarrant. He'd put the whisky bottle away again, but left on the table a bottle of Apollinaris water from which I was helping myself. Shell-shaped silver dishes contained calcu-

lated amounts of salted nuts and potato chips and there was a large silver box that I knew contained a selection of cigarettes. Tarrant, Frank's butler, had arranged a similar array on Frank's side of the coffee table. Apart from Frank's expensive hi-fi, Tarrant had ensured that the household and its routines were not modified by advances in science or fashion. As far as I could see, Frank did the same thing for the Department. On an inlaid tripod table, booklets and files were arranged in fans, like periodicals in a dentist's waiting-room. From the table Frank took the West German passport I'd been using when detained in Poland. He flipped its pages distastefully and looked from the identity photo to me and then at the photo again,. 'This photograph,' he said finally. 'Is it really you?' 'It was all done in a bit of a hurry,' I explained. 'Going across there with a smudgy picture of someone else in your passport is a damned stupid way of doing things. Why not an authentic picture?' 'An identity picture is like ethnic food,' I said. 'The less authentic it is the better.' 'Can you elaborate on that a little?' said Frank, playing the innocent. 'Because the UB photocopy, and file away, every passport that goes through their hands,' I said. 'Ahhh,' said Frank, sounding unconvinced. He slid the passport across the table to me. It was a sign that he wasn't going; to take the matter any further. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. 'Don't use it again,' said Frank. 'Put it away with your Beatles records and that Nehru jacket.' 'I won't use it again, Frank,' I said. I'd never worn a Nehru jacket or anything styled remotely like one, but I would always remain the teenager he'd once known. There was no way of escaping that. 'You are senior staff now. The time for all those shenanigans is over.' He picked up my report and shook it as if something might fall from the pages. 'London will read this. There is no way I can sit on it for ever.' I nodded. 'And you know what they will say?' I waited for him to say that London would suspect that I'd gone to Moscow only in order to see Gloria. But he said: 'You were browbeating Jim Prettyman. That's what they will say. What did you get out of him? You may as well tell me, so that I can cover my arse.' 'Jim Prettyman?'

'Don't do that, Bernard,' said Frank with just a touch of aggravation. If it was a chess move, it was an accomplished one. To avoid the accusation that I was grilling Prettyman I would have to say that I was there to see Gloria. 'Prettyman was more or less unconscious. There was little chance of my doing anything beyond tucking him into bed and changing his bedpans, and there was a nurse to do that. What would I be grilling Prettyman about, anyway?' 'Come along, Bernard. Have you forgotten all those times you told me that Prettyman was the man behind those who wanted your sister-in-law killed?' 'I said that? When did I say it?' 'Not in as many words,' said Frank, retreating a fraction. 'But that was the gist of it. You thought London had plotted the death of Fiona's sister so that her body could be left over there. Planted so that our KGB friends would be reassured that Fiona was dead, and not telling us all their secrets.' Fortified by the way Frank had put my suspicions of London in the past tense, I put down my drink and stared at him impassively. I suppose I must have done a good job on the facial expression, for Frank: shifted uncomfortably and said: 'You're not going to deny it now, are you, Bernard?' 'I certainly am,' I said, without adding any further explanation. 'If you are leading me up the garden path, I'll have your guts for garters.' Frank's vocabulary was liberally provided with schoolboy expressions of the nineteen thirties. 'I'm trying to put all that behind me,' I said. 'It was getting me down.' 'That's good,' said Frank who, along with the Director-General and his Deputy, Bret Rensselaer, had frequently advised me to put it all behind me. 'Some field agents are able to do their job and combine it with a more or less normal family life. It's not easy, but some do it.' I nodded and wondered what was coming. I could see Frank was in one of his philosophical moods and they usually ended up with a softly delivered critical summary that helped me sort it all out. 'You are one of the best field agents we ever had working out of this office,' said Frank, sugaring the pill. 'But perhaps that's because you live the job night and day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.' 'Do I, Frank? It's nice of you to say that.'

He could hear the irony in my voice but he ignored it. 'You never tell anyone the whole truth, Bernard. No one. Every thought is locked up in that brain of yours and marked secret. I'm locked out; your colleagues are locked out. I suppose it's the same with your wife and children; I suppose you tell them only what they should know.' 'Sometimes not even that,' I said. 'I saw Fiona the day before yesterday. She annihilated some poor befuddled Ministry fogey, she made the chairman apologize for inaccurate minutes of the previous meeting and, using the ensuing awkward silence, carried the vote for some training project they were trying to kill. She's dynamite, that wife of yours. They are all frightened of her; the FO people I mean.' 'Yes, I know.' 'It takes quite a lot to scare them. And she thrives on it. These days she's looking like some glamorous young model. Really wonderful!' 'Yes,' I said. I would always have to defer to Frank in the matter of glamorous young models. 'She said the children were doing very well at school. She showed me photos of them. They are very attractive children, Bernard. You must be very proud of your family.' 'Yes, I am,' I said. 'And she loves you,' he added as an afterthought. 'So why keep stirring up trouble for yourself?' Frank gave one of those winning smiles that half the women in Berlin had fallen prey to. 'You see, Bernard, I suspect you planned the whole thing — your train ride from Moscow with Pretty-man. I think you made sure that there would be no one else available from here to do it.' 'How would I have made sure?' 'Have you forgotten the assignments you arranged in the days before you went away?' As he said this he toyed with his pipe and kept his voice distant and detached. 'I didn't arrange their assignments. I don't know those people. I did as Operations suggested.' 'You signed.' Now he looked up and was staring at me quizzically. 'Yes, I signed,' I agreed wearily. His mind was made up, at least for the time being. My best course was to let him think about it all. He would see reason eventually; he always did. No reasonable person could believe that I'd carefully plotted and planned a way to get Prettyman alone in order to grill him about Tessa's death. But if Frank suspected it, you could bet that:

London believed it implicitly; for that's where all this crap had undoubtedly originated, And, in this context, 'London' meant Fiona and Dicky. Or at least it included them. 'Did you try one of those fried potato things?' he said, pointing to one of the silver dishes. 'They are flavoured with onion.' 'Curry,' I said. 'They are curry-flavoured. Too hot for me.' 'Are they? I don't know what's happening to Tarrant lately. He knows how I hate curry. I wonder how they put all these different flavours into them. In my day things just tasted of what they were,' he said regretfully. I got to my feet. When the conversation took this culinary turn I guessed Frank had said everything of importance to him. He rested his pipe in a heavy glass ashtray and pushed it aside with a sigh. It made me wonder if he smoked to provide some sort of activity when we had these get-togethers. For the first time it occurred to me that Frank might have dreaded these exchangers as much as I did; or even more. 'You were late again this morning,' he said with a smile. 'Yes, but I brought a note from Mummy.' Surely he must have known that I was going to the Clinic every morning; they'd found two hairline cracks in my ribs, and were dosing me with brightly coloured pain-killing pills, and taking dozens of X-rays. I shouldn't be drinking alcohol really, but I couldn't face a lecture from Frank without a drink in my hand. 'Stop by for a drink tonight,' he said. 'About nine. I'm having some people in . . . Unless you have something arranged already.' 'I said I'd see Werner.' 'We'll make it another night,' said Frank. 'Yes,' I said. I wondered if he'd taste one of the 'potato things' and find they were onion after all. I don't know what made me tell him they tasted of curry, except in some vague hope that the hateful Tarrant would be blamed. Perhaps I shouldn't have mixed alcohol and pain-killers.

*

By the time my official confirmation as Frank's deputy came through I was settled into my comfortable office and making good use of my assistant and my secretary, as well as a

personally assigned Rover saloon car and driver. I'd often remarked that Frank had kept the Berlin establishment absurdly high, but now I was reaping some of the rewards of his artful manipulations. Frank, having resisted appointing a deputy for well over two years, made the most of my presence. He attended conferences, symposiums, lectures and meetings of a kind that in the old days he'd always avoided. He even went to one of those awful gatherings in Washington DC to watch his American colleagues in CIA Operations trying to look cheerful despite the seemingly unending intelligence leaks coming from the top of the CIA tree. Although in theory Frank's frequent absences made me the de facto chief in Berlin, I knew that his super-efficient secretary Lydia never missed a day without reporting to him at length, even when this meant phoning him in the middle of the night So I never emerged from Frank's shadow, which was perhaps something of an advantage. My new-found authority granted me the chance to put my old friend Werner Volkmann on a regular contract. Werner was always saying he needed money, although the fees we paid him wouldn't go very far to meeting Werner's lifestyle. His business — arranging advance bank payments for East German exports — was drying up. Things were becoming more and more difficult for him because the bankers were frightened that the DDR might be about to default on its debts to the West. But being on Departmental contract seemed to do something for his selfesteem. Werner loved what I once heard him call the 'mystique of espionage'. Whatever that was, he felt himself a part of it and I was happy for him. 'Having you here in Berlin, on permanent assignment, is like old times,' Werner said. 'Whose idea was it?' 'Dicky sent me here to spy on Frank.' I said it just to crank him up. We were sitting in Babylon, a dingy subterranean 'club'. It was owned by an amusing and enigmatic villain named Rudi Kleindorf, who claimed to come from a family of Prussian aristocrats, and was jokingly referred to as der grosse Kleine. We were sitting at a hideous little gilt table, under a tasselled light fitting. We had been invited for a drink and a chance to see how everything was coming along. Our inspection had been quickly completed and now we were having that drink. The club wasn't functioning yet; it was still in the process of being redecorated. The workmen had departed but there were ladders and pots of paint on the stage, and on the bar top too. There had been stories that it was to be renamed 'Alphonse', but the Potsdamerstrasse was not the right

location for a club named Alphonse. Whatever name it was given, and whatever the colour of the paint, and the quality of the new curtains for the stage, and even some new, slimmer and younger girls, it would never be a place that tourists, or Berlin's Hautevolee, would want to frequent, except on a drunken excursion to see how the lower half lives. I wondered if Werner had been enticed to put some money into Rudi Kleindorf's enterprise. It was the sort of thing Werner did; he could be romantically nostalgic about dumps we'd frequented when we were young. Werner reached for the bottle on the table between us and poured another drink for me. He smiled in that strange way that he did when figuring the hidden motives and devious ways of men and women. His head slightly tilted back, his eyes were almost closed and his lips pressed together. It was easy to see why he was sometimes mistaken for one of the Turkish Gastarbeiter who formed a large percentage of the city's population. It was not only Werner's swarthy complexion, coarse black hair, large square-ended black moustache and the muscular build of a wrestler. He had a certain oriental demeanour. Byzantine described him exactly; except that they were Greeks. 'And Frank?' said Werner. There was nothing more he need say. Dicky was youthful, curlyhaired, energetic, ambitious and devious; while Frank was bloodless, tired and lazy. But in any sort of struggle between them, the smart money was on Frank. Frank had spent a great deal of his long career being splashed in the blood and snot of Berlin, while Dicky was concentrating upon crocodile-covered Filofax notebooks and Mont Blanc fountain-pens. Werner and I both knew a side of Frank that Dicky had never seen. Never mind all that avuncular charm, we'd seen the cold-blooded way in which Frank could make life-and-death decisions that would have consigned 'don't-know Dicky' to a psychiatrist's couch in a darkened room. 'What's Dicky frightened of?' 'Nothing,' I said. 'I can truthfully say he's frightened of nothing except perhaps an audit of his expense accounts.' There were voices from behind the tiny stage and then a man came out and played a few bars on the piano. I recognized it as an old Gus Kahn tune: 'Dream a little dream of me'. 'So it was Frank's idea?' Werner asked. Werner was an impressive piano player; I could see he was listening to the music with a critical car. 'It wasn't anyone's idea. Not the way you mean. The job was vacant; I came.'

Werner said: 'Frank has managed without a deputy for ages. Don't you need to be in London . . . somewhere near Fiona and the kids? How are they doing?' 'They are still with Fiona's parents. Private school with extra tutoring as needed, a pony for Sally and a mountain bicycle for Billy, evenings with Grandpa and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.' 'What are you going to do?' 'Do? I can't snatch them away from the bastard without providing something better, can I?' I said, curbing my anger and frustration. The piano player suddenly ended his experimental tunes, stood up and shouted that the piano was no good at all. A disembodied voice shouted that there was no money to get another. The piano player shrugged, looked at us, shrugged again and then sat down and tried Gershwin. 'Couldn't they live in London with Fiona?' said Werner. 'It's an apartment — not fifteen acres of rolling countryside . . . and Fiona works every hour God Almighty sends. How would we arrange things? I'd have them here if I could think of some feasible way of doing it.' I looked down at my hands; I had clasped one fist so tight that a fingernail had cut my palm, and drawn blood. Werner watched me and tried to cheer me up: 'Well, you don't have to be in Berlin for ever and I'm sure there's plenty to do here.' 'Enough. A Deputy Head of Station is on the establishment. I suppose Frank was afraid that if the position remained unfilled too long it would be abolished. Anyway it gives Frank a chance to disappear whenever he likes.' 'But it ties you down.' The theory is: I get one long weekend in London a month.' 'You'll have to fight for it,' said Werner. 'That's why I'm going this weekend,' I said. Perhaps he was right to be sceptical. I could see that events were unlikely to make it possible for me to go across to London so regularly. With Frank's frequent wanderings, I would be snatching a day or two as and when opportunities came along. 'This weekend I go,' I promised him again, and in doing so promised myself too. 'I'm booked on the plane; I'm seeing the children. And if World War Three starts at Checkpoint Charlie, Frank will have to handle the opening moves all by himself.'

'You don't think London might have put you on the shelf? Put you here so you don't get access to mainstream material?' 'I handle everything going through here. You need top clearance for that.' 'Except the secrets that Frank handles and keeps close to his chest.' 'Not Frank,' I said, but of course Werner was right. I'd not seen any of the signals about Prettyman, and the questions about moving him, and the complications that arose from his US passport, until I got to Moscow. Who knows if there were other signals expressing interest in my past friendship with Prettyman, or my sometimes indiscreetly voiced suspicions of his role in Tessa's death. 'Frank invited me for happy-hour and then read the Riot Act to me. It must have been prompted by London.' Werner gave me a told-you-so stare. 'Is London sniffing at me? Why me? Why now?' 'Because you keep on about Tessa, that's why. London have sidelined you.' 'No,' I said. 'And this is just the beginning. They'll get rid of you completely. Firing you in Berlin makes sure you can't kick up the sort of fuss you'd be able to do if you were made redundant while working in London Central.' 'Well I'm not going to just forget about Tessa.' 'You said you had forgotten about it.' 'When?' 'You just told me.' 'Don't shout Werner, I'm not deaf.' Slowly and with exaggerated pedantry Werner said: 'You told Frank you were trying to put the Tessa death behind you, You said the whole business was getting you down. You told me that, Bernie, not half an hour ago.' 'Yes,' I said. 'But I didn't mean I was going to forget about it.' 'What did you mean, Bernie?' 'I mean I will put aside all my previous suspicions and ideas. I will start afresh. I'm going to look into Tessa's death as if I'd come to it for the first time. I'm convinced that Bret Rensselaer is behind it all.'

'Now it's Bret. Why Bret? Bret was in California, wasn't he?' 'If I could get Bret in the right mood, I could get him to spill the beans. He's not like the others.' 'But what would Bret know?' 'Bret had access to a big slice of the Department's dough. It looked as if he'd embezzled it and some idiot tried to arrest him, remember?' 'And you saved him. You saved Bret that time. I hope he remembers that episode when he came running to you in Berlin.' 'He's not likely to forget it. That shooting at the station changed Bret. They thought he would die. His hair went while and he was never the same again.' 'But Bret didn't steal any Departmental money?' 'Bret was up front in a secret Departmental scheme to siphon money away. By koshering a few millions aside they covertly financed Fiona's operations in the East.' 'You told me.' 'But Prettyman was on that committee too. He put some money into his own pocket. They sent me to Washington DC to bring Prettyman back but he wasn't having any.' 'That can't be true, Bernie. Prettyman is a blue-eyed boy nowadays.' 'He did a deal with them. I'd like to know what the deal was; but they bury these things deep. That's why I would like to get Bret talking. Bret was on the committee with Prettyman. Bret was the one who planned Fiona's defection. Bret would know everything that happened.' 'My God, Bernie. You never give up, do you?' 'Not without trying,' I said. 'Give up this one now. The people in London are not going to sit still while you light a fire under them.' 'If no one there is guilty they have nothing to worry about.' 'You sound very smug. If no one there is guilty, they will be even more furious, more angry, more vindictive to find that an employee is trying to hang a murder charge on them.' 'If you are right, Werner. If you are right that they have sent me here as the first step in a plan to get rid of me, I have nothing to lose, do I?' 'If you'd drop it, they might drop it too.'

'Yes,' I said. 'And everything in the garden would be lovely. But I'm going to find out who gave the orders to kill Tessa, and I'm going to find the one who gave the order to pull the trigger that night. I'll face them with proof: depositions and any cither kind of evidence I unearth. And well before they pull the carpet from under me, I'm going to have them dancing to the tune I play on my penny whistle.' 'You are just angry. You are just angry that Dicky got the job you should have had. You are just inventing the cause for a vendetta.' 'Am I? Well let me tell you this, Werner. There was a Canadian nurse on that train with Prettyman. She might have been holding hands with him. She has spent many happy evenings in Washington; or so she told me.' 'Prettyman was always like that.' 'She was wearing a brooch that belonged to Tessa.' 'She was what?' He gulped on his drink. 'Oh, I'm glad you still retain the capacity to be surprised, Werner. I was beginning to think there was nothing you wouldn't nod through. Yes, one of Tessa's favourite brooches; a big sapphire set in yellow gold and silver and studded with matched diamonds.' 'How can you be sure that it's not just a brooch that looks like the one Tessa had?' 'It's antique; not a modern reproduction. The chances of finding another one exactly like that are pretty slim. It was Tessa's brooch, Werner. And the nurse told me it was a gift from Mr James Prettyman. Oh, yes, and from Mrs Prettyman too. But nursie seemed to think it was just junk jewellery. Is that what they all thought?' 'Did you ask Prettyman about it?' 'Unfortunately no. I was lifted off the train before I got a chance to beat an answer out oi: him.' 'Shall I chase it? Where is the nurse now?' 'I've no idea; home with her family in good old Winnipeg, I suppose. Let her be, Werner. She knows nothing. It might pay off better if I surprise Prettyman with the questions.' Werner looked unhappy. 'Please, Bernie. You are going over the top. I know it's all going to end in disaster. What will you do if they fire you? I'll do anything you want, but please drop this one.' 'You and Frank treat me like I've just got back from a drunken party to report a flying saucer. I'm not going to drop it until I'm satisfied.' I gulped the rest of my drink, then got to my feet and

looked around the room again. Werner was determined to play baby-sitter for me, and I wasn't in the mood to be babied. I got enough of that from Frank all week. 'Then don't talk to me about it,' said Werner. 'That's all I ask.' He didn't say it quickly and angrily; he said it slowly and sadly. I didn't give any attention to that fact at the time. Perhaps I should have done.

*

'This smell of paint is terrible,' I said. 'When is this bloody idiot supposed to be opening this dump?' I noticed with sadness that the old mural had disappeared under a couple of litres of white paint. It had been an imaginative array of hanging gardens, the great ziggurat and naked women dancing through palm trees, done by a drunken artist who had never travelled beyond the Botanical Gardens in Steglitz. I wondered what would replace it. 'Next Tuesday the builders said, but now they are wavering. The carpenters haven't finished and the painters have hardly started. They will have to finish and clear up completely before anyone can start polishing the floor. It will all take quite a time. Rudi is looking for somewhere else to hold his opening party. Somewhere bigger. Maybe a hotel.' 'I can't just walk away and forget about Tessa,' I said. 'I just can't.' Werner was closely studying some tiny spots of paint that had been splashed on the tablelamp. By the time I left, the pianist was playing a Bach partita in a minor key. It wouldn't be easy to dance to.

3 The North Downs, Surrey, England When someone asks you to make an objective decision that will affect their future, you can confidently assume that they have already decided upon the course they intend to follow. So when my father-in-law phoned to be sure that I would be with Fiona when she visited the children at the weekend, I sensed that there was something else on his mind and I wasn't expecting to hear anything comforting. But those vague forebodings had faded a little by the time I was with Fiona in her shiny new Jaguar. It was one of the perquisites of her new post. The Department frowned upon senior staff using foreign cars, and a Porsche like the one she'd previously owned would have earned a quiet rebuke. Fiona was at her magnificent best. She liked driving. Her dark hair was shiny and loose and wavy, and she had let it grow, so that it almost touched heir shoulders, and swung wide to frame her face as she turned to smile at me. Her relaxed grin, natural skin texture and rosy cheeks reminded me of the young girl with whom I'd fallen so desperately in love. There was nothing to reveal her long ordeal in East Germany or the demanding workload that she now took upon herself without respite. Escaping from London's seemingly interminable squalor, and its brooding suburbs, is not easy. The beguiling villages that once surrounded the capital had become small plastic versions of Times Square. Even the snow could not completely conceal their ugliness. But finally we reached some stretches of open countryside, and eventually the lovely old house where Mr and Mrs David Kimber-Hutchinson made a home for my children. Set in a particularly attractive part of southern England, the house was secluded. There were trees on every side: pines and firs mostly, evergreens that ensured that the scene changed little in winter or summer. The house was Jacobean but successive wealthy owners, and acclaimed architects, had done everything possible to obliterate the original structure. Since my last visit David had squeezed permission from the

local bureaucrats to further deform the property with a six-car garage. The new building had a lacquered-brass weather-vane on its red plastic roof, and automatic doors at both ends, so that he could drive right through rather than face the hazards and inconvenience of backing out. Fiona turned off the road and drove through the entrance where wrought-iron gates entwined the monogram of my in-laws. 'What a horror,' she said as she caught sight of the new garage. Perhaps she'd said it to forestall any rude reaction that might have been my first response. The concertina doors were pushed back far enough to reveal her father's silver Rolls, and the black Range Rover that was her mother's current car. Her mother got through a lot of cars because each time she dented one she 'lost confidence in it'. This latest one had been chosen by David and, on his specific instructions, fitted with massive steel crash bars at front and rear. As if in tacit warning to other road users, it was painted with a livery of formalized flame patterns along its side. Fiona gave a toot on the horn and parked outside, alongside a battered little Citroën with Paris licence plates and a 'Teachers against the Bomb' bumper sticker. We got out and went into the garage, which was wide enough to take half a dozen Rolls-Royces and still have room for workbench, sinks, neatly coiled hoses and an air compressor. I inspected David's latest pride and joy, a 3-litre Bentley open tourer, one of those shiny green icons of the nineteen twenties. Vintage cars had become his passion since a series of bad falls, and a bitter dispute with the master of foxhounds, had stopped him chasing foxes. Her father was standing at the workbench when we arrived. He waved her forward, using both hands upraised as if marshalling a Boeing into its slot. He was wearing dark blue coveralls of the sort that garage mechanics favour, but peeping from the collar there was a yellow cashmere rollneck. 'You made good time, darling,' he announced approvingly as Fiona scrambled from the driving seat and kissed him. 'We were lucky with the traffic,' said Fiona. 'And Bernard . . . what have you done to your face, Bernard?' He was sharp, I must say that for him. My face was only slightly swollen and had drawn little reaction from others. 'I walked into a bird-cage.' 'Bernard, you . . .'

Fiona interrupted whatever her father was about to say: 'Bernard fell down the stairs . . . in Berlin. He cracked a rib. He's not fully recovered.' Fiona knew where I'd got the bruises of course. We'd not spoken of it but she must have: read my brief report about the Polish fiasco and guessed the bits I left out, 'Watch yourself, Bernard,' said her father, looking from one to the other of us as if suspecting that the whole truth was being withheld. 'You're not a youngster any more,' And then, more cheerfully: 'I saw you looking at the Bentley. She's one hundred per cent authentic; not a replica or made up from new parts.' 'It's cold, Daddy. Let's go inside the house.' 'Yes, of course. I'll show you later, Bernard. You can sit in her if you want.' He led the way through a doorway that had been cut through a side wall of the original house to gain direct entrance from the garage. 'That frost last night,' he said as he opened the door into his carpeted drawing-room. 'I think it may have killed the eucalyptus trees. I'll be shattered if they go — after all the love and labour and money I've spent on them.' 'Where's Mummy?' 'I have a tree expert coming this afternoon. They say he's the man Prince Charles uses.' 'Where's Mummy?' 'She's resting. She gets up in the small hours and does all that yoga malarkey. Huh! And then she wonders why she gets tired.' 'She says it's doing her good,' said Fiona. 'Six o'clock is far too early. She runs the bath and that wakes me up,' said David, 'and then I sometimes have trouble getting off to sleep again.' He slapped his hands together. 'Now for elevenses, or would you prefer a real drink?' 'It's too early for me,' said Fiona, 'but I'm sure you can persuade Bernard to join you.' 'No,' I said. It was a culture trap. England's holy ritual, of halting everything to sit down and drink sweet milky tea at eleven o'clock in the morning, would be marred by a dissenter guzzling booze, or even coffee. 'I'll order tea then,' said David, picking up a phone and pressing a button to connect him to one of his many servants. 'Who's that?' he asked, and having elicited the name of a servant he instructed: 'Tell cook: morning tea for three in the Persian room. My usual — toasted scones and

all that. And take tea to Mrs Hutchinson: Earl Grey, no milk, no sugar. Ask her if she's going to join us for lunch.'

*

'How lovely to be home again,' said Fiona. I know she only said it to appease her father, but it made me feel as if I'd never provided a proper home for her. 'And you are not looking too well,' her father told Fiona. Then realizing that such remarks can be interpreted as criticism added: 'It's that damned job of yours. Do you know what you could be earning in the City?' 'I thought they were firing people by the hundred after the crash last year,' she said. 'I know people,' said David, nodding significantly. 'If you wanted a job in the City you'd be snapped up.' He leaned towards her. 'You should come to the health farm with us tomorrow. Five days of rest and exercise and light meals. It would make a new woman of you. And you would meet some very interesting people.' 'I have too much urgent work to do,' said Fiona. 'Bring it with you; that's what I do. I take a stack of work, and my tiny recording machine, and do it away from all the noise and commotion.' 'I have a meeting in Rome.' He shook his head. The life you people lead. And who pays for it? The poor old taxpayer. Very well then, it's your life.' 'The children are still studying?' Fiona asked him. It was not just her way of changing the subject. She wanted me to hear the wonderful things her parents were doing for our children. On cue, her father described the highly paid tutors who came to the house to give my children additional lessons in mathematics and French grammar, so that they would do well in their exams, and be able to go to the sort of school that David went to. When the tea-tray came, everything was placed on the table before Fiona. While she was pouring the tea David divested himself of his coveralls to reveal a canary-coloured cashmere sweater, beige corduroy trousers and tasselled loafers. He spread himself across; a chintzcovered sofa and said: 'Well, what have you done with poor little Kosinski?' Since David was looking at me as he said it, I replied: 'I haven't seen him for ages.'

'Come along! Come along!' said David briskly. 'You've locked him up somewhere and you're giving him the third degree.' 'Daddy. Please,' said Fiona mildly while pouring my tea. Pleased that his provocation had produced the expected note of exasperation from his daughter, he chuckled and said: 'What are you squeezing out of the little bugger, huh? You can confide in me; I'm vetted.' He wasn't vetted, or in any way secure, and he was the last man I would entrust with a secret of any importance. So I smiled at him and told Fiona that I wanted just one sugar in my tea and yes, a toasted scone — no, no homemade strawberry jam — would be lovely and promised that it wouldn't spoil my appetite for lunch. 'I flew to Warsaw to see him,' said David, flapping a monogrammed linen napkin and spreading it on his knee. 'Just before Christmas; at five minutes' notice. No end of bother getting a seat on the plane.' 'Did you?' I said, inserting a note of mild surprise in my answer, although I had been shown a surveillance photo of him and Kosinski there at that time. 'He told me that Tessa was still alive.' I watched Fiona's reaction to this startling announcement; she just shook her head in denial and drank some tea. 'It was a ruse,' I explained. 'He probably believed it but it was just a cruel attempt to exploit him.' 'And exploit me,' added David. He accepted a buttered scone from Fiona and nibbled at it as he thought about his visit to his son-in-law. 'Yes, and to exploit you,' I agreed, although it was hard to imagine how even the wily tricksters of the Polish security service would find ingenuity enough for that. 'Now he is working for us. I don't know any more than that.' 'Don't know or won't tell?' Fiona got to her feet, looked at the ceiling as she listened, and said: 'I believe the French lesson is ending.' 'Yes,' agreed David, after punching the air in order to expose his gold wrist-watch to view and see the time. 'She doesn't give us a minute of extra time. The French are all like that, aren't they?'

Reluctant to censure French venality in such general terms, Fiona said: 'I'll just go and say hello to her, and ask her how they are coming along.' Clever Fiona; she knew how to escape. It must have been something she learned while working with the KGB. Or with Dicky Cruyer. 'Fifteen pounds an hour she costs me,' David confided to me. 'And she has the nerve to add on travelling expenses from London. The trouble is I can't get anyone from the village. You need the authentic seizième arrondissement accent, don't you, huh?' I drank my tea until, from somewhere upstairs, I heard Fiona trying out her Paris slang on the lady teacher. She hit the spot judging from the sudden burst of hearty feminine laughter that followed the next exchange. I faced David and ate my scone, smiling between bites. We both sat there for a long time, silent and alone, like a washed-out picnic party, under dripping trees, waiting for the thunder to stop. Having finished my scone before my host I got up and went to the window. David came and stood alongside me. We watched Fiona tramping across the snowy garden. The teacher was with her, and hand-in-hand with the children they inspected the snowman. The snow had retreated to make icy-edged white islands into which the children deliberately walked. Billy — coming up to his fourteenth birthday — considered himself tar too old to be building snowmen. He had supervised the building of this one on the pretext that it was done solely to entertain some local infants who had been at the house for a tea party the previous afternoon. But I could tell from the way they were acting that both Billy and his younger sister Sally were proud of their elaborate snow sculpture. It wouldn't last much longer. A slight thaw had crippled it so that: it had become a hunch-backed figure, glazed with the icy sheen that had formed upon it overnight. 'Everybody respects her,' said David. 'Yes,' I said. It was true that everyone respected Fiona, but how significant it was that her father should claim that. Even her mother and father didn't really love her. Their love, such as could be spared, had been lavished on Tessa, the younger sister, the eternal baby. Fiona had too much dignity, too much achievement, too much of everything to need love in the way that most people need it. My memory went back to the day that I first met Fiona's parents, and to the briefing she provided for me as we drove down here to see them in my old Ferrari. It was my final outing in that lovely old lady. The car was already sold, the deal settled, and the first instalment of the

money deposited in my bank. The money was needed to buy Fiona an engagement ring with a diamond of a dimension that her family would judge visible to the naked eye. Tell them you love me, she had advised. It's what they will be waiting to hear. They think I need someone to love me. I told them that. I would have told them anyway. I did love and never stopped loving her. 'You love her,' said David, as if needing to hear me say it again. 'You do: I know you do.' 'Of course I do,' I said. 'I love her very much.' 'She bottles everything up inside,' he said. 'I wish I knew what went on inside her head.' 'Yes,' I said. Many people would have liked to know what went on inside Fiona's head, including me. From what I knew, even the KGB agent — Kennedy — who had been assigned to seduce her, and monitor her thoughts, had failed. He'd fallen for her instead. The wounding fact was that Fiona had taken that sordid little adventure seriously. She'd fooled him of course. She hadn't betrayed her role as a double-agent working for London because Fiona was Fiona — a woman who would no more reveal her innermost thoughts to her lover than she would to her father, her children or her husband. I watched her with my children; this woman who had bowled me over and from whom I would never escape, this remote paragon, dedicated scholar and unfailing winner of every contest she entered. She might even emerge as the victor in the bitter contest for power in the Department. I suppose my feeling for her was founded upon respect as well as love. Too much respect and not enough love perhaps, for otherwise Gloria would never have turned my life upside down. Gloria was no fool but she was not wise; she was sizzling and street-smart and perceptive and desperately in love with me. I was torn in half: I found myself in love with two women. They were entirely different women but few people would find chat an adequate explanation. I told myself it was wrong but it didn't make the dilemma less excruciating. 'That cloud base: it never gets really light these days,' said David, turning away from the window and sitting down. 'I hate winter. I wanted to get away to somewhere warm but there are things here that: I must do myself. You can't trust anyone to do their job properly.' I chose a chair and sat down opposite him. It was a lovely room, the sort of comfortable family retreat that is only found in England and its country houses. So far this room had escaped the 'face-lifts' that David had inflicted on so much of the house. The furniture was a hodgepodge of styles; a mixture of the priceless and the worthless. The Dutch marquetry cabinet, and the collection of Lalique glass displayed inside it, would have fetched a fortune at auction. Next to it

there were two battered sofas that had only sentimental value. A lovely William and Mary marquetry mirror reflected an ancient stained and frayed oriental carpet. The log fire made crackling sounds and spat a few sparks over the brass fire-irons. The yellow light of the flames made patterns on the ceiling and lit up David's face. 'He tried to murder me, you know,' he said, and turned to look out of the window as if his mind was entirely given to his family in the garden. 'George,' he added eventually. 'George?' I didn't know what to say. Finally I stammered: 'Why would he do that? He's family.' David looked at me as if declining to respond to a particularly offensive joke. 'It makes me wonder what: really happened to Tessa.' He went and stood by the window, his hands on his hips. 'George didn't kill your daughter, David. If that's what you are driving at.' 'Then why try to poison me?' Again I was speechless for a moment. 'Why do you think?' I countered. 'Always the police detective, aren't you, Bernard?' He said it with a good-natured grunt, but I knew he had long since categorized me as a government snooper. He said society was rife with prying petty officials who were taking over our lives. Sometimes I wondered if he wasn't right. Not about me, but about the others. I made a reckless guess: 'Because you suspected him? Because you accused him of being a party to his wife's death?' 'Very good, Bernard.' He said it gravely but with discernible admiration. 'You're very close. Go to the top of the class.' 'And how did George react?' 'React?' A short sharp bitter laugh. 'I just told you; he tried to kill me.' 'I see.' I was determined not to ask him how. I could see he was bursting to tell me. That's one of my walking-sticks,' he said suddenly. Following his gaze I saw that out on the snowy lawn Billy was patching up the snowman with fresh snow and had removed the snowman's walking-stick while doing it. I wondered if David was going to lay claim to the snowman's hat too. 'I didn't know they wanted my stick for that damned snowman.' Billy and Sally patted more snow on to the snowman's belly. I suppose the thaw had slimmed it down a little.

Turning back to me, David said: 'In Poland, I complained of a headache and George gave me some white pills. Pills from a Polish package. I didn't use them of course.' 'No,' I said. 'Of course not.' 'I'm not a bloody fool. All written in Polish. Who knows what kind of muck they take . . . even their genuine aspirin . . . I'd sooner suffer the headache.' 'So what happened?' 'I brought them back with me. Not the packet, he'd thrown that away; or so he said.' 'Back to England?' 'See that little cherry tree? I buried Felix, our old torn-cat, under it. The poor old sod died from one of those tablets. I didn't tell my lady wife, of course. And I don't want Fiona to know.' 'You think the tablet did it?' 'Three tablets. Crushed up in warm milk.' 'Did the cat eat them willingly, or did you dose it?' 'What are you getting at?' he said indignantly. 'I didn't choke the cat, if that's what you mean. I was dosing farm animals before you were born.' I'd forgotten how highly he cherished his credentials as a country gentleman. 'If it was a very old cat . . .' 'I don't want you discussing this with my daughter or with anyone else,' he ordered. 'Was this what you wanted to ask me?' I said. The dead cat and whether to report it?' 'It was one of the things,' he admitted reluctantly. 'I wanted to ask you to take a note of it off the record. But since then I have decided that it's better all forgotten. I don't want you to repeat it to anyone.' 'No,' I said, although such a stricture hardly conformed to the way in which he identified me with the powers of government. I recognized this 'confidential anecdote' about his son-in-law's homicidal inclinations as something he wanted me to take back to work and discuss with Dicky and the others. In fact I saw this little cameo as David's way of hitting his son-in-law with yet another unanswerable question, while keeping himself out of it. The only hard fact I could infer from it was that David and George had fallen out. I wondered why. 'Forget it,' said David. 'I said nothing, do you hear me?' 'It's just a family matter,' I said, but my grim little joke went unnoticed. He was still standing in the window, and now he turned his head to look out at the garden again. Fiona and the

children were heading back. Seeing David profiled, and in conjunction with the snowman at the bottom of the lawn, I wondered if the children had intended it to be a caricature of their grandfather. Now that the belly had been restored and the shoulders built up a little it had something of David's build, and that old hat and walking-stick provided the finishing touches. It was something of a surprise to find that my little children were now judging the world around them with such keen eyes. I would have to watch myself. 'They're growing up,' said David. 'Yes, I'm afraid so.' He didn't respond. I suppose he knew how I felt. It wasn't that I liked them less as grown-ups than as children. It was simply that I liked myself so much more when I was being a childlike Dad with them, an equal, a playmate, occupying the whole of their horizon. Now they were concerned with their friends and their school, and I couldn't get used to being such a small part of their lives.

*

'I've got two suitcases belonging to that friend of yours.' David meant Gloria of course. 'When she brought the children over here to us, she left two suitcases with their clothes and toys and things. Expensive-looking cases. I don't know where to contact her, apart from the office, and I know you people don't like personal phone calls to your place of work. I thought perhaps you would be able to take them and give them back to her.' 'No,' I said. 'I don't go to the London office, I work in Berlin nowadays.' 'I didn't want to ask Fiona.' He displayed characteristic delicacy in not wanting to ask Fiona about the whereabouts of my one-time mistress. He didn't really care of course. The question about the suitcases that Gloria had left with him was just a warning shot across my bows. Now he got on to more important matters. 'She's still not well.' He was looking at Fiona and the kids. 'She's tired,' I said. 'She works too hard.' 'I'm not talking about being tired,' said David. 'We all work too hard. My goodness . . .' He gave a short laugh. '. . . I'd hate to show you my appointments diary for next week. As I keep

telling those trade union buggers, if I worked a forty-hour week I'd be finished by lunchtime Tuesday. I haven't got even a lunch slot to spare for at least six weeks.' 'Poor you,' I said. 'My little girl is sick.' I'd never heard him speak of Fiona like that; his voice was strained and his manner intense. 'It's no good the pair of you telling each other that she's just tired and that a relaxing holiday and a regime of vitamin tablets are going to make her fit and well again.' 'No?' 'No. Tonight we have a few people coming to dinner. One of the guests is a top Harley Street man, a psychiatrist. Not a psychologist, a psychiatrist. That means he's a qualified medical man too.' 'Does it?' I said. 'I must try and remember that.' 'You'd do well to,' he said gruffly, suspecting that I was being sarcastic but not quite certain. He moved away from the window and said: 'He agreed with me; Fiona will never be fit enough to take charge of the children again. You know that, don't you, Bernard;' 'Has he examined Fiona?" 'Of course not. But he's met her several times. Fiona thinks he's just a drinking chum of mine.' 'But he's been spying on her.' 'I'm only saying this for your sake, and for the sake of Fiona and your wonderful children.' 'David. If this is a prelude to your trying to get legal custody of the children, forget it.' He sighed and pulled a long face. 'She's sick. Fiona is slowly coming round to face that truth, Bernard. I wish you would face it too. You could help me and help her.' 'Don't try any of your legal tricks with me, David.' I was angry, and not as careful as I might have been. With an insolent calm he said: 'Dr Howard has already said he'd support me. And I play golf with a top-rate barrister. He says I would easily get custody if it came to it.' 'It would break Fiona's heart,' I said, trying a different angle. 'I don't think so, Bernard. I think without the children to worry about she'd be relieved of a mighty weight.' 'No.' 'Why do you think she's been putting it off so long? Having the children back with her, I mean. She could have come down here as soon as she returned from California. She could have

taken the children up to the apartment in Mayfair — there are spare bedrooms, aren't there? — and made all the necessary arrangements to send them to school and so on. So why didn't she do that?' There was a long pause. Tell me, Bernard.' 'She knew how much you both liked having the children with you,' I said. 'She did it for you.' 'Rather than for you,' he said, not bothering much to conceal his glee at my answer. 'I would have thought that you would have liked having the children with you, and that she would have liked having the children with her.' 'She loves being with them. Look at her now.' 'No, Bernard. You can't get round me with that one. She likes coming down here to see the children. She's pleased to see them so happy and doing well at school. But she doesn't want to take on the responsibility and the time-consuming drudgery of being a Mum again. She can't take it on. She's mentally not capable.' 'You're wrong.' 'I'm surprised to hear you say that. According to what Fiona tells me you yourself have said all these things to her . . .' He waved a hand at my protest. 'Not in as many words, but you've said it in one way or another. You've told her repeatedly that she's trying to avoid having the children back home again.' 'No,' I said. 'I never said anything like that.' He smiled. He knew I was lying.

*

David's dinner party seemed as if it was going to last all night. He was wearing his new dinner suit with satin lapels, and his patent Gucci loafers with red silk socks that matched his pocket handkerchief, and he was in the mood for telling long stories about his club and his golf tournaments and his vintage Bentley. The guests were David's friends: men who spent their working week in St James's clubs and City bars but made money just the same. How they did it mystified me; it wasn't a product of their charm. By the time the dinner guests had departed, and the family had exchanged goodnights and gone upstairs to bed, I was pretty well beat, but I felt compelled to put a direct question to Fiona.

Casually, while undressing, I said: 'When do you plan to have the children living with us, darling?' She was sitting at the dressing-table in her nightdress and brushing her hair. She always brushed her hair night and morning, I think it was something that they'd made her do at boarding school. Looking in the mirror to see me she said: 'I knew you were going to ask me that.' 'Did you?' 'I could see it coming ever since we arrived here.' 'And when do you think?' 'Please, darling. The children's future is hardly something to be settled at this time of night, when both of us are worn out.' 'You can't keep on avoiding; it, Fi.' 'I'm not avoiding it,' she said, her voice raised a tone or so. 'But this is not the time or the place, surely you can see that.' It was obviously going to cause an argument if I pursued it further. I was angry. I washed and cleaned my teeth and went to bed without speaking to her other than a brusque goodnight. 'Goodnight, darling,' she said happily as I switched out the light. I shut my reddened eyes and knew no more until Fiona was hammering at me and shouting something I couldn't comprehend. 'What?' 'The window! Someone is trying to force their way in!' I jumped out of bed but I knew it was nothing. I was getting used to Fiona's disturbed sleep. I went to the window, opened it and looked out. I froze in the cold country air. 'Nothing here.' 'It must have been the wind,' said Fiona. She was fully awake now. And contrite. 'I'm sorry, darling.' She got out of bed and came to the window with a dispirited weariness that made me feel very sorry for her. 'There's nothing there,' I said, and gave her a hug. 'I think I must have eaten something that upset me.' 'Yes,' I said. She always blamed such awakenings on indigestion. She always said she couldn't remember anything of the dream itself. So now I no longer asked her about them. Instead I played along with her explanations. I said: 'The fennel sauce on the fish, it was very creamy.' 'That must have been it,' she said. 'You've been working too hard. You should slow down a little.'

'I can't.' She sank down at the dressing-table and brushed her hair in a mood of sad introspection. 'I'm directly involved in all the exchanges between Bonn and the DDR. Enormous sums of money are being given to them. I wonder how much of it is being pocketed by Honecker and Co, and how much gets through. Sometimes I worry about it. And they become more and more demanding.' I watched her. The doctor had given her some tablets. She said they were no more than pep pills — 'a tonic'. She had them on the dressing-table and now she took two pills and drank some water to swallow them. She did it automatically. She always had the tablets with her. I had a feeling that she took them whenever she felt low, and that meant frequently. I said: 'How do you pay them?' 'Depends. It falls into four categories: Western currency payments to the East German State, Western currency payments to private individuals, trade credits guaranteed by Bonn, and a hotchpotch of trade deals that wouldn't be done except that we — or more frequently Bonn — push them along. I don't have much to do with that end of it. We are only really interested in the money that goes to the Church.' 'Is the Department involved in any of the money transfers?' 'It's complicated. Our contact is a man named Stoppl. He's a founder of "the Protestant Church in Socialism", a committee of East German churchmen who negotiate with their regime's leaders and do deals. Some deals involve the Western Churches too — there is a Church trust which arranges the money — or sometimes Bonn. All of these deals are very secret, things are done but never revealed. Sometimes we have Honecker and Stoppl negotiating one-to-one, out at Honecker's Berlin home on the Wandlitzsee.' 'So these deals must be common knowledge among the communist top brass?' Honecker's palatial dwelling was in the Politburo residential compound. The communist leaders had their luxury homes there, together with an abundance of capitalist luxuries from camcorders and laptops to soft toilet paper. The whole site was guarded by armed sentries and surrounded with a chain-link fence and razor wire. I knew that locale very well: it was an intimidating place to visit. The identity of visitors to the sanctum was carefully checked, and their names logged in a book held by the guard commander. 'Oh yes. They all share in the spoils. Our official line is that they may steal a lot of the money but some gets through to Stoppl's people and that money is vital.'

'Vital. Yes.' 'In church halls and vicarages, and church premises of all kinds, ordinary people talk about local social problems, about environmental pollution and injustice. They talk about peace and human rights issues.' 'I get the idea, Fi.' 'The underlying theme is Christian protest.' 'You're playing with fire,' I told her. 'Christian values.' 'You sound just like your father,' I said. 'That's what you always say when you lose an argument with me.' 'I shouldn't have said it.' She laughed derisively. 'Is that a retraction or just an apology?' But Fiona was like her father, there was no denying it. Equally obviously she didn't enjoy that resemblance. I think Fiona dearly loved her mother, but not her father. She was frightened of being too much like her mother; frightened of ending up bullied and silenced as her mother had been over the years. That determination to escape her parents was the key to Fiona's complex personality. For she was also afraid of becoming like her father. At least that's how I saw it, but I wasn't a psychiatrist. I wasn't even a psychologist. In fact I didn't even have a proper contract for my pen-pushing job in Berlin. 'And for how long will the West keep pumping money into Honecker's bankrupt regime?' I asked. 'The communists are extremely good at wining and dining visiting press and TV people. The Leipzig Fair is their show-case. Ill-informed newspaper articles in the West consistently say Honecker's economy is strong, and getting stronger. You must read the junk that newspaper feature writers produce in return for a first-class ticket and a couple of days of being feasted and flattered. Last month the World Bank had their resident half-wits putting out some crackpot statistics to prove that per capita income in the DDR was higher than in the UK. Yesterday I saw a glowing press cutting from some journalist in Dublin telling her readers that the West could learn a lot from what the East Germans are doing. That sort of bosh is translated and circulated in the East, and it keeps the lid on things back home in Honecker's kingdom.'

'Honecker is cunning. It's a police State, but the East Germans are sheltered from crime, given apartments, cheap food and jobs — no unemployment in the workers' State -cheap holidays, free education, free medical care. It's no good saying it's lousy medical care, or that the jobs are poorly paid, or that the workers are crowded into nasty little apartments. Or that thousands die from the filthy pollution in the air and the rivers and canals are frothing with poisonous scum and belly-up fishes. The citizens of this gigantic prison camp have what the Germans call Geborgenheit — security and shelter — and they are not going to fight in the streets to get rid of the regime.' She sighed. She knew I was right. 'The DDR is bankrupt. The West must chop off all payments without warning,' I said. It's the only way to bring change. Let the regime collapse Show the East Germans that they are living a lie; they are living on handouts: from the West.' 'But Washington and Bonn are afraid that Moscow will move in to prop Honecker up if we don't support him,' said Fiona. 'Moscow? Don't start thinking that Gorbachev is some kind of freedom-loving capitalist. He's a dedicated comrade, making a few concessions to the West in order to preserve some semblance of what Lenin created. It will need a braver man than Gorby to reform the USSR. The whole Federation is on the slide. In a few years Moscow will be as bankrupt as Honecker.' 'In a few years, yes. That's why Britain, and the Americans, refused to give Honecker a State visit even when Belgium, France and Spain agreed. How could they do that? And then that silly man Kohl invites him to West Germany. Honecker is shaky, but how long will he last? With such stupid leaders in the West to help him, no one can be sure.' 'If Moscow goes bust, will the West cut Honecker off without a pfennig? That will be worth waiting for.' Fiona went over to the window. The sky was getting light now. When she spoke it was with a determination that she seldom revealed. 'Yes, and the Honecker regime will collapse. And then the Church groups we've trained will be needed to hold things together.' 'So that's the scenario?' 'It's what I've given half my life: to,' she said, as if she was now counting the depth of her sacrifice rather than its duration.

Gently she pulled back the curtain to see the early morning sky. There was a band of mist stretched across the horizon. Dark clumps of treetops floated upon it to make tropical islands in a luminous ocean. I didn't want to challenge her ideas, but every report we saw from agents on the ground said that the Stasi had increased in numbers, and increased in influence, month by month for the last five years. Maybe it was a reaction from a regime that was doomed, but that didn't mean it was; less dangerous. The Stasi were penetrating Fiona's precious East German Church groups. In Allenstein bei Magdeburg the pastor was working for the Stasi until, just before Christmas, someone put a bomb under his car. And every month the Stasi — self-styled 'shield and sword of socialism' — tightened up security. They opposed all attempts to liberalize the regime. The Stasi stamped upon anyone who dared to ask for anything at all. Even Russian publications were banned as too liberal. Now, in what must surely be the ultimate echo of George Orwell's predictions, East Germans had been forbidden to sing the lyrics of their own national anthem, because its words 'Germany united fatherland' might give loyal communists ideas about cooperating with West Germany. Perhaps Fiona was thinking along the same sobering lines, for she didn't pursue the matter. 'We mustn't leave it too late,' she said without turning round. 'I hate driving in the dark, nowadays. It's a sign of growing old I suppose. And we're dining with Dicky on Monday.' 'Do you know how to work this gadget?' I was turning all the knobs of the tea-making machine. David had installed them in all the guest bedrooms. 'It's easier to use the electric kettle,' she said. She plugged it in and started it. She switched on the lights too. Then she went back to bed. 'It's too early to get up, darling.' 'We'll have tea in bed,' I said. 'Very well, but if I don't answer your next question for a long while, I may be asleep.' 'I was thinking of ducking out of Dicky's dinner, but I can't think of a convincing excuse.' 'We'll have to go, darling. Everyone will be there. It's not social and it's not optional. Dicky's dinners are just Departmental meetings in disguise.' 'I don't feel strong enough for a whole evening of Dicky's imbecile chit-chat.' 'You don't feel like it!' said Fiona with a sudden burst of resentment. 'How do you think I will enjoy sitting round the table with them all?' I leaned across and kissed her on the ear. She didn't have to draw a diagram for me. By everyone she meant that Gloria, my one-time lover, would be there. And everyone present would

be watching with interest every glance, word and smile that the three of us exchanged. It was difficult for her; but it was no picnic for me either. Maybe Gloria would think of a convincing excuse. I looked round the room, waiting for the kettle to boil. We'd been installed in the best of half a dozen guest bedrooms. This one was 'the Mozart room' and its walls were hung with framed music manuscripts and some early wooden musical instruments: a concertina, a violin and a mandolin. To save on space, each instrument had been cut in half and mounted on a mirror. It saved on musical instruments too, I suppose.

*

'Suppose George did try to murder him?' said Fiona calmly, as she sat propped up in bed watching me make the tea. 'It can't be entirely ruled out, can it?' 'For what purpose?' I said, and for a moment regretted confiding the conversation to her. But I couldn't see any way I could avoid reporting it all to the office, and that meant Fiona. 'Does there have to be a purpose:' You have always said that not every act has a purpose.' Actually what I 'always said' was that people 'go mad' or rather act in irrational and inexplicable ways. There was no evidence to suggest that her father was mad. At least no madder than I'd always known him. 'I suppose we could provide it to the interrogation team at Berwick House and see if they can spring it on George to any effect.' 'Felix was very old,' said Fiona. 'Look, darling. If that had really been a lethal poison, the poor old tom-cat would have died in style.' 'What do you mean?' 'It would have shown symptoms of poisoning.' 'How can you be so sure?' 'I've never come across painless poisons,' I said, 'except in books.' I made the tea and took the tray, with teapot and cups and milk jug, to Fiona's bedside table. She was fussy about tea and liked to pour it herself. 'Never?'

'It would have to be from one of the major groups: arsenic, cyanide or strychnine. Any of those would have caused Felix spectacular symptoms.' 'Daddy is not very observant.' 'After feeding it what he suspected was poison intended for himself? He'd be watching every move of that damned cat, you know he would.' 'I suppose you are right,' she said. 'AH poisons?' 'Cyanide brings on a desperate breathless choking spasm and convulsions. Strychnine brings even more violent convulsions. But the most likely poison would be arsenic, or one of the other metals. It's the poisoner's first choice.' 'Yes, we had an arsenic case while I was in Berlin. I had to give evidence. It had no security dimension. It was a domestic quarrel — one of the clerks tried to murder his wife. One of the police pathologists told me that, of all the poisons, arsenic produces symptoms most like those of natural disease.' 'Well that's because pathologists don't get to the scenes of crime until life is extinct. Next time you see him, tell him arsenic brings on vomiting, trembling and bloody diarrhoea. If your father had seen the cat succumbing to a lethal dose of arsenic he wouldn't have waited until our next weekend visit to mention it to me.' 'I suppose you're right, you usually are.' She meant of course that I was usually right about vulgar brutal matters that it was better not to know about. The pathologist was a her,' she added as an afterthought. 'Your father didn't really believe it was poison.' 'Daddy's not paranoid,' said Fiona, deftly avoiding the question. No, I thought, he's just a megalomaniac. For people who think of themselves all the time, paranoia is simply a way of confirming how important they are. I said: 'He only had to dig the cat up, and send it along to a laboratory.' 'I think we should suspend judgement.' Her slow smile revealed her true feelings: that my prejudice was unreasonable and unyielding. Of course she might have been implying that there were lots of painless poisons; exotic toxins that chemists concoct in secret government-financed laboratories. But that would have brought us into the world of officially authorized murder; and for the time being, neither of us wanted to believe George could ever have been a party to that kind of killing. 'I'll pour the tea, shall I?'

'Lovely. What are you reading?' She took her book from the table so that I could see its cover: Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie. 'Good grief, Fi, you've been reading that same book for ages.' 'Have I? What's the hurry? Is that enough milk for you?' 'Yes,' I said, taking the tea from her hand. But in fact: I don't really like milk in tea; it was one of the many English ideas I never properly adjusted to. 'So Billy got into the football team at school. Well, well, well. I never saw him as an athlete.' 'Yes, that's wonderful,' said Fiona. She didn't like sport of any kind but she tried to sound pleased. 'There was no one trying to get in the window, Fi,' I said. 'It was just the sound of the wind,' she affirmed. 'I don't know what came over me. Listen to it howl in the chimney.' 'Yes,' I said, although I couldn't hear the wind in the chimney nor anywhere else. The night was almost unnaturally calm.

4 London: the Cruyers' home 'Now that Bernard has finally joined us,' proclaimed Dicky Cruyer in a voice tinged with impatience, 'we can proceed with the ceremony.' Dicky was wearing a navy blue dinner suit. He'd bought it back in the days when everyone said dark blue photographed better on television. But Dicky had never been on television, and now his suit just looked unusual. In response to Dicky's urgent hand signals someone reduced the volume of the hi-fi from which carne Stan Getz playing the 'One-Note Samba'. I was the last to arrive only because Dicky had dumped a file upon my desk just two hours before and I had been working to complete it before leaving the office. I caught Fiona's eye and she blew me a kiss. Bret was there, wearing a new dinner suit. His slim figure looked good in black. Together with the white hair brushed tight against his skull, his angular face so carefully shaved and dusted with powder, he looked somewhat menacing: the sort of gangster figure that Hollywood invented when George Raft and Jimmy Cagney stopped doing musicals. Resuming his brisk parade ground voice, Dicky said: 'I know everyone here tonight will . . . give Bernard a glass, Daphne darling . . . will join me in offering Augustus my belated congratulations on becoming Operations supremo. Hurry, Daphne. We are all waiting.' Daphne Cruyer was pouring measures of champagne from a magnum bottle of Pol Roger. Daphne became nervous at these occasions when her husband brought his colleagues home to a little dinner party. She should not have distributed the empty glasses to the guests before going round with the bottle. Now, as they held their glasses out, she was finding it difficult to pour from the big bottle without spilling some wine each time. 'Thank you, Mrs Cruyer,' slid Augustus Stowe, as the champagne overfilled his glass and ran bubbling down his fingers to drip on to his shoe. Stowe had never visited the Cruyers before, and judging by the distracted look on his face was wondering what he was doing here now. He was

an efficient, outspoken and extremely irritable Australian. As some of the messenger boys had demonstrated on the wall of the men's toilet, Stowe was remarkably easy to caricature because of the hair chat grew from his ears and nostrils, and the fact that his head was shiny, pink and completely bald. It was of course a contrivance to call this dinner party a celebration of Stowe's appointment. That had all been celebrated, debated and deplored many weeks before. Stowe was reassigned when Dicky was appointed to 'Europe Supremo'. It was only a temporary arrangement. Augustus Stowe, who had held that Europe job for some time, was urgently needed to deal with one of the calamities that were a regular part of life in Operations. Stowe was still there but he wouldn't last much longer. No one held on to Operations for very long. Firing the chief of Operations was the standard act of contrition that the Department offered to the Joint Intelligence Committee each time the politicos lobbed a salvo of complaints at us. And lately those salvos had become a cannonade. But Dicky was the desk-man par excellence. By having my wife Fiona as his assistant, he'd kept a grip on both the German Desk and the Europe job too. This dinner party was a way of saying to Augustus Stowe — and the world in general — that Dicky was going to fight to hold on to the Europe Desk. It was a way of telling Stowe not to come back this way. 'Now everyone has a glass, I think. So congratulations, Augustus!' said Dicky, holding his glass aloft. With varying measures of enthusiasm and gestures of good will, the assembled company complimented Stowe and then sipped their drink and looked around. 'That's not a ready-made bow tie, is it, Bernard?' said Dicky as he pushed past me to see why the girl with the peanuts and olives was not distributing them quickly enough. She was talking to Gloria and they were comparing the heels of their shoes. 'Come along,' Dicky told the girl. 'You should be doing the hot sausages by now.' 'She forgot the mustard dip,' Daphne told him. 'We haven't used these caterers before. They sent six packets of frozen bite-sized pizzas without asking if we had a microwave. I was hoping they would thaw but they are rock-hard.' 'I can't do the catering too, darling,' Dicky told her in distant tones. 'It's not much to ask: just to make sure these catering people bring the right food. My God, we are paying them enough.' 'It looks ready-made,' I said, 'but that's because I'm good at tying them.'

'What was that, Bernard? Oh, yes. Well, be a good chap and take the olives round, would you?' Then he turned back to Daphne and said: 'Put the pizzas in a hot oven, darling. I'll just keep on serving "shampoo" until they are ready,.' I found the table where Daphne had abandoned the magnum of champagne and poured myself another glass. Alongside the champagne there were two vases crammed with expensive cut flowers. I suppose the other guests had brought them as gifts. I felt guilty about not doing the same until I noticed that a tall bunch of dark reel roses held a card saying 'Fondest love from Bernard and Fiona'. 'We love that painting of Adam and Eve,' I heard Dicky saying behind me. I turned and found he was confiding his feelings to Bret Rensselaer and Gloria. I offered them all olives but only Gloria took one. She bit into it with her amazingly white teeth and then handed the pit back to me. There was a certain intimacy to this action and I think she thought so too. I smiled at her. It looked as if this might be the most intimate thing to happen between us for a very long time. Dicky was telling Bret how Daphne had bought the painting cheap in a flea market in Amsterdam, I had heard the story a thousand times, and I clearly remembered Bret standing here in the Cruyers' drawing-room listening politely to Dicky's rambling and rather dubious account of this purchase. Augustus Stowe was standing by a glass case in the corner studying the contents: Dicky Cruyer's valuable collection of antique fountain-pens It seemed an appropriate collection for a man who had climbed so far in the world of bureaucrats. Stowe perhaps thought so too, for he pulled a face and moved on to join two people from his Operations section who were talking with Fiona. It didn't really matter whether Augustus Stowe was the guest of honour or just an extra man. The evening had really been arranged so that Dicky could clarify his working relationship with Bret. This was a make-or-break evening. The work at the office might or might not be discussed, but by the time the evening ended these two men would have made their peace or declared war. Dicky had found it difficult to adjust to the way in which Bret Rensselaer had unexpectedly arrived in London. Unrolled from the magic carpet and into the Deputy's office like Cleopatra for a startled Caesar, he had seized control of the Department. His only real superior, the DirectorGeneral, seemed to be giving Bret a more or less free hand.

'Europe can no longer be treated like an odd assortment of people with weird languages and funny costumes,' Dicky was earnestly explaining to Bret. 'Europe together musters more people, more talent and more wealth than the entire USA.' Bret said nothing. And yet I knew from the long time I had spent with Bret in California that it was the sort of remark that usually produced an acid question about why Europe couldn't afford armed services to defend itself without American military help. Bret was an Anglophile, but that didn't mean he felt European. Bret's infatuation with England and the English made him exceedingly sceptical about life lived by foreigners beyond the English Channel. He smiled at Dicky. Dicky said: 'Since moving into the Europe slot I have made it my business to visit every one of our European offices. I love Europe. In some ways I think of Paris as my real home.' 'How are you managing to divide authority with Fiona?' asked Bret. 'She hasn't been complaining?' 'She's so busy running around the globe that I seldom get the pleasure of talking with her.' 'She supports me in everything I do,' said Dicky. 'I hardly know how . . .' He paused and wet his lips. I suspect he'd been about to say that he didn't know how he would manage without her but it came out: '. . . how I would replace her.' 'No need to worry about replacing her, Dicky,' said Bret. 'No?' said Dicky nervously and drank some champagne. It was at a previous gathering like this — in Dicky's home — that Bret had announced that he was the newly appointed Deputy D-G. That traumatic experience had left Dicky nervous that Bret might choose this evening for another such bombshell. But Bret didn't add anything more to this verdict on Fiona's security of tenure. Somewhat pointedly, he moved away from Dicky to speak with her. I heard him say: 'You are looking ravishing tonight. Fiona.' She was wearing a severely cut dark green dress with matching shoes. When Bret started talking to her she frowned and bent her head as if concentrating. Or perhaps she was looking at her silk shoes. She had told me many times that they were difficult to keep in good shape. She never wore them when driving, she slipped them off and operated the pedals in her stockings.

Everyone was in evening dress. Mine was creased in all the wrong places. I'd packed it carelessly when coming back from my weekend with my father-in-law and only got it out of my suitcase half an hour or so before arriving at Dicky's. As if to cover any confusion he'd suffered at Bret's hands, Dicky turned to me and said: 'Bret's a bit nervous tonight. There was a personal security alert for all senior staff this afternoon. I told Bret he should be armed but he said it would spoil the line of his tuxedo.' Dicky laughed in a way that made it difficult to know if he was scoffing at Bret's foolishness, or memorizing the line for his own use. 'No one told me,' I said. Dicky sipped his drink and glanced around the room to see who was talking to who. 'Well, you are not exactly senior staff, old boy,' he said with a boyish smile. Dicky was looking young and fresh and energetic this evening. And his hair had suddenly become almost unnaturally curly. I wondered if he had it permed from time to time. 'It's nothing to be alarmed about. The embassy hoodlums have been ordered to provide some sort of back-up. And that's as much as we have discovered. I doubt if it's a hit of any sort. I suspect it's something to do with dissidents. It could be anything. It could be a break-in or a line-tap.' Daphne came to Dicky's side. She was wearing a long plain dress with large embroidered flowers on it. Daphne had picked up a damaged piece of tapestry in one of the antique markets she frequented, and had removed the flowers from it. 'Will you be able to carve the Iamb?' she asked Dicky. 'I told you not to get a leg.' 'A shoulder is so fatty,' said Daphne. 'Get Bernard to carve it,' said Dicky. 'He's good at that kind of thing.' 'Could you, Bernard? I've had the knife sharpened.' 'Of course he can,' said Dicky before I could reply. 'He's my slave, isn't he? He'll do anything I tell him to do.' He put a hand round my shoulder and hugged me. 'Right, Bernard?' 'I'll carve it for you, Daphne,' I said. 'But I'm not an expert.' 'Your poor face,' said Daphne. 'What happened, Bernard?' 'He applied the old powder-puff a bit too energetically,' said Dicky. 'No, really,' said Daphne, looking at me with sympathy.

'It's secret,' said Dicky. 'Let him alone. Bernard is paid to take a few knocks when the job calls for it.' I knew of course that Dicky was giving me the sort of treatment he would have liked to be giving to Bret. Although I hadn't followed the exact implications of his brief exchange with Bret, his subsequent irritation was enough to tell me that Dicky did not feel entirely secure in his Europe Desk job. I wondered if Bret was about to leap-frog Fiona into becoming Dicky's senior. It was the sort of device that Bret would use to shake up the Department. And Bret had been heard to say that a shake-up was exactly what the Department urgently needed. The trouble was that I was always the one who got Dicky's flak. 'It's mid-life crisis,' said Daphne when we reached the kitchen and I was appraising tie roast leg of lamb and putting an edge on the carving knife. 'That's what my doctor says.' Daphne was wearing a professional cook's white apron of starched white cotton. Her name — Daphne Cruyer — was embroidered in red on its front, in the style of self-acclaim made famous by Paul Bocuse. 'You're young yet, Daphne,' I said. 'Not me; Dicky,' she said, showing a flash of pique. 'Dicky's in mid-life crisis.' 'Your doctor said this?' 'The doctor knows how upset I am,' she explained. 'And he knows how insensitive Dicky can be. It's all those young girls he has around him all day. He has to keep proving his masculinity.' She fetched a large oval plate from the massive shiny steel professional oven she'd had fitted since my previous visit. 'You can carve it in advance, Bernard.' 'I'll do it at the table, Daphne. I know that's how you like to serve dinner.' 'You are a dear man,' she said. 'If all the girls were chasing after you, I would find it easier to understand.' 'Yes, so would I,' I said. After that the guests sat down and the dinner party continued in the way that Dick>'s dinner parties usually continued. Daphne made sure that Gloria and Fiona were sitting as far apart as possible. And for that I was grateful to her.

*

The next day I made a journey that took me into England's authentic countryside. This was a stark contrast to the cosy toyland which my father-in-law shared with London's stockbrokers, bankers, judges and gynaecologists. Visits to 'Uncle' Silas had punctuated my life ever since I was a small child. I had always loved Whitelands, his rambling great farm on the edge of the Cotswolds. Even in winter it was magnificent. The house, built of local light-brown stone, its ancient carved-oak front door, and its mullioned windows, provided a perfect image of old England as the Christmas card industry chose to record it. Countless times I had hidden in the cobwebbed attic or sat in the panelled billiards room, on the bench under the cue-rack, looking at the doleful heads of assembled deer, now moth-eaten and threadbare. I couldn't think of Whitelands without smelling the freshly baked scones that Mrs Porter brought from that temperamental old solid-fuel oven. Just as I couldn't remember exploring that vast stone barn without sneezing, or recall the chilly Sunday morning journeys to the church in the village without a shiver. For me, the highlight of my visits to Whitelands was the perfect roast beef lunches cooked with loving care by Mrs Porter, the housekeeper. On Sundays it was always local game: if not partridge or pheasant, then Silas would be carving and serving hare or rabbit. As I grew up and learned to count, I was permitted to supervise the billiards score-board. It provided an excuse to be there, an opportunity to watch my father, Silas and other luminaries of the Department, smoking Silas's Cuban cigars, drinking his vintage Hine brandy and arguing in a good-natured way about how the world should be arranged and exactly how and when they would do it. Whitelands had been in the Gaunt family since one of his more affluent predecessors bought it from a beer tycoon who went to something more grandiose. Only after he retired did Silas come to live here all the year round, and his hospitality became legendary. All manner of weird people came here for the weekend; musicians — prominent or penniless — were especially welcomed, for Silas was devoted to music. They were seldom famous people but they were always convivial and interesting. The weekends were an unchanging ritual: a country walk as far as the river, church service, smoky afternoon billiard games for men only, and a formal dinner for which the guests were expected to dress in long gowns and penguin suits. Silas was a distant relative of Fiona's family, and he became the godfather of my son. Friends became relatives, and relatives became friends. The Department had always been like that; a curious intermingling of bright boys from expensive schools and their otherwise unemployable

male relatives. Perhaps it would have been better and more efficient if its personnel had been recruited from a wider spectrum of British life, but it wo aldn't have been so amusing, or so frustrating. Now Whitelands and all it represented was to end for ever. Some of the rooms had already been cleared of Silas's more personal possessions. One capacious white dust sheet had transformed the chairs, and the long polished table of the dining-room, into a wrinkled dirigible. The dining-table, without extension panels, was shorter than I ever remembered it. I was saddened to think that I would never again see that table loaded under food, crowded by visitors and noisy with arguments. 'I'll come back,' said Silas firmly, as if reading my thoughts. I'm only leasing this place . . . short lease. And to people I know well. I've told them I will be returning. I'm even trusting them with the key of my wine cellar.' 'I hope so, Silas,' I said. 'What about Mrs Porter?' 'She'll be living nearby. I made that a condition. I need to know there is someone here, keeping an eye on things on my behalf. You'll come and see me?' I nodded. We were sitting in what Silas called 'the drawing-room'. Most of the light came from the big open fire upon which he had just placed a mossy log. This was the sanctum to which Silas had retired when he first became unwell. Around him he had arranged some of his most cherished possessions: his favourite lumpy sofa and an equally lumpy painting of his grandfather on a horse. Silas was lumpy too. Already big in frame, his indulgence in good food, and complete indifference to his personal appearance, had made him fat and unkempt. His remaining hair was fuzzy, his jowls heavy, his shirt frayed and his woollen cardigan — like Silas himself — slowly coming unravelled. 'You put in the new trees,' I said. 'It broke my heart to lose the elms.' 'They'll soon grow.' 'Canadian maples or some such thing. The forestry people said they grow quickly, but they are sickly-looking growths. I don't like the look of them.' 'Give them a chance, Silas. You mustn't be impatient.' 'An apartment,' said Silas. 'What will life be like in an apartment block?' 'I thought it was your idea.'

'It was a compromise,' he said. 'At first it was only my local doctor threatening me. Then the Department joined in. They say it's all for my benefit, but I'd rather stay here and put up with whatever happens. We've all got to die some time.' 'You mustn't talk like that,' I said. 'You've got years of life and work ahead.' 'What about my music?' said Silas. 'I'm taking all my records and tapes. I hope I'm not going to have some wretch banging on the wall just because it's after eleven o'clock.' 'Get well,' I said. 'That's the important thing. Get well and come home to Whitelands again.' 'I'm not sick,' he declared. Although old and somewhat wheezy, he appeared to be in good health and quick-witted too. 'But the Department made me submit to a physical examination by their stupid doctor. It's some new rule about the pension funds. That's what started the fuss. Otherwise I wouldn't have agreed to go away at all. Before you go, you might like to take a lust look around, Bernard?' 'Yes,' I said. 'And I want you to take a crate or two of wine with you. Choose whatever you like ' Before I could respond, he added: 'I will never get through it all even if I live to be one hundred.' I looked at him and waited to hear the reason for him demanding my presence. Silas was a noisy extrovert, a blunt and yet devious old man, and certainly not likely to bring me down here without a specific reason. He got up and closed the door. Tall and plump and untidy, he had many weaknesses, of which gambling was the one most associated with him both at work and at play. 'There are things that were never committed to paper, Bernard. When I go, the facts will go too. You understand?' 'Of course.' 'I've always been a gambler,' said Silas. 'Sometimes I've won. When I've lost I've paid up without complaint. But in all my years in the Department I've never gambled with people's lives. You know that, Bernard,' I didn't answer. The truth was that I didn't know what was decided in the secret dialogues that men like Silas had on the top floor. 'When I thought we were going to lose Fiona last year, I was worried. They are not like us, Bernard, those people over there. They don't interrogate, explicate and isolate.' He smiled; it was one of the maxims of the Department. 'If they had got wind of what Fiona was doing to their precious socialist empire her end would have been too savage to think about. They put that

fellow . . . what's his name . . . into a furnace: alive. At first no one here would believe it, but then we intercepted the official account. It was done in front of witnesses.' 'What is it, Silas? What are you trying to tell me?' 'I didn't know they would kill Tessa,' he said. 'All I was told was that there would be a faked identity. Her identity.' 'Who told you that?' 'We handed the whole project over to the Yanks,' said Silas. 'We needed to be distanced from it.' 'That doesn't fit with what I know,' I told him. 'It was done by a man named Thurkettle, wasn't it?' 'Thurkettle. Yes: an American.' 'An American mercenary. The story I heard is that he was released from a high-security prison to do some dirty work for the CIA. Very dirty work.' 'Perhaps he was,' said Silas. 'I thought he was a bona fide Washington man. I was persuaded to give him a free hand.' 'To do what?' 'Certainly not to murder anyone,' said Silas indignantly. 'I never met him personally of course, but I was assured that he could provide a smoke-screen while we brought Fiona out.' 'A smoke-screen? What did you think he was going to do?' 'It was vital that the Stasi people, and Moscow too, should think Fiona had died. If they had known that she was safe, and in California, giving us a detailed picture of everything they had done . . . Well, they would have simply taken emergency action: changed codes, changed methods, changed agents, changed everything. Fiona's years of courage and jeopardy would have been in vain.' 'But Tessa was killed. And her body was burned to help the deception.' 'What can I say to you? I can't say I wasn't at fault, because I was. I trusted that swine. I thought it was going to be only a matter of paperwork.' 'Without a body? How would that have worked?' I asked him. 'A dead body perhaps. A body taken from a hospital mortuary. That has been done before, and will no doubt be done again. It's not the use of the body, is it? It's the killing.' 'Yes, it's the killing,' I agreed.

'Tessa's death has brought terrible consequences,' said Silas. 'None of us will ever be the same again. Not you, not Fiona, not that poor husband of hers. And certainly not me. I haven't slept one full night since I heard the news. It was the end of my relationship with the Department, of course. The D-G wanted me to continue in my arm's-length advisory role, but I told him I couldn't. It broke my heart.' 'Where is Thurkettle now?' 'He went to Oregon, the last I heard of him. But he may have moved on. Canada perhaps. The Americans had given him a new identity so he could do more or less as he wished. There was talk of having him face some sort of murder charge, but that would have meant negotiations with the Americans. And even if they had agreed we could hardly drag our covert actions through open court. Concealing the fact that Fiona was alive and well was exactly what we had started out to do in the first place.' 'Yes,' I said. 'And to some extent Thurkettle probably feels he did what had to be done.' 'Yes,' I said. 'And to some extent I suspect that's how you feel too.' Silas frowned. 'I thought you would understand,' he said. 'Your father would have understood.' 'He would have understood all right. He was accused of shooting some Germans named Winter back in 1945. He was innocent. But the Department let the charges stand because they didn't want him to face questioning by American lawyers in another jurisdiction.' 'That's an over-simplification,' protested Silas. 'It ruined his career, didn't it?' 'Your father understood that it was necessary.' 'Very well. But don't expect me to go along with the kind of bloody nonsense my father put up with. My father is not me, and I am not my father. Time has moved on, and so has everything else.' 'I hate rows,' said Silas plaintively. 'Yes, of course you do. So do I, if I can get my way without having them.' When I left the room Silas leaned back and closed his eyes as if in pain. I sought out Mrs Porter to say goodbye. I was hoping to hear her confidential opinion about Silas and his plans. I found her in the kitchen, and she was determined to keep her own counsel. 'I know what you want to talk about, Mister Bernard,' she said. 'But I know my place. It's not for me to have an

opinion about anything.' She took out her handkerchief and wiped her nose. 'I can't seem to shake off this head-cold,' she said. 'And there is so much to do in the house.' She smiled at me. Mrs Porter had helped to create the magical atmosphere of Whitelands. It was difficult to guess how much of all I loved would remain after new tenants moved in.

*

I got into the car and found myself trembling. I don't know why, perhaps it was due to anger and resentment, or the memories of my father's humiliation. I drove down to the village and stopped at the Brown Bess, It was an unfashionable little pub, sandwiched between a scum-encrusted duck pond and a neglected war memorial. Those villagers who could afford it, and the weekend inhabitants, kept to the other pub, the big multi-mirrored Queen Victoria that faced the village green, where the weekend cricketers and their adoring families could enjoy frozen food with foreign names, and champagne with a dash of blackcurrant juice. The Brown Bess was an intimate gathering place for dart-playing farm-workers. The landlord served me with an excruciating politeness bordering on hostility. I took my beer and my Cheddar cheese sandwich and sat on the steps of the war memorial to eat it, scarcely noticing the cold. I wanted to think. To be subjected to the devious ways of my father-in-law, and then Silas Gaunt, in close succession was more than anyone should be asked to endure. I rebelled. Afterwards — when it was too late — even my most loyal friends and staunchest supporters said my plan of action had been headstrong and ill-advised. The kinder ones said uncharacteristically so. They wondered why I acted impulsively without taking one of them into my confidence, or giving more thought to the consequences. It was David's claim upon my children — and Fiona's apparent indifference to it — that worried me most. The problem and possible solutions went round and round in my head. That day, sitting on the war memorial with my pint of beer, I listed on a single page of my notebook every alternative open to me; no matter how absurd or impractical. I went through each answer one by one and rejected only those that stood no chance of success. It looked like this: arguing with David would get nowhere, while fighting him through Britain's expensive legal system would result in custody of the children for him and legal fees that would bankrupt me. With the conversation about arsenic fresh in my mind, I even considered killing him. I might have done it

too; but I felt that even undetected it would provide the children with a legacy even worse than having David as a 'father'. To add another dimension to my predicament, I couldn't forget the warning that an Englishman from the Warsaw embassy had given me recently. He thought the other side might take revenge on Fiona, for the way she had tricked them, by killing off her loved ones one by one and at unpredictable intervals. They had done that to a Russian defector named Simakaitis, and he'd ended up in a mental home. Well, Fiona's sister was dead, and her brother-in-law was in trouble that might well have been contrived by Moscow. Fiona was far from well; sometimes I thought she was on the edge of a breakdown. Perhaps there was some diabolical scheme to take revenge upon the whole family. And perhaps it was working.

*

I made the most of my extended stay in London. The next day I went to a rendezvous in the basement of one of those second-hand bookshops that crowd the Leicester Square end of London's Charing Cross Road. The meeting was at my request, so I could hardly argue about the venue. I had been to the shop before. It was a useful meeting place — I knew them all — and I picked my way down the narrow wooden stairs to a cellar that became a labyrinth of small rooms. Every room was crammed with old books. Here and there, free-standing racks divided the spaces so that it was a squeeze to get past them. There were books piled on the floor, and more remained unpacked in dusty cardboard cartons. The subterranean rooms were damp, for London is a basin and we were not far from the river. The books gave off a musty smell. Encyclopedias of all shapes and sizes shared the shelves with the refought battles of wartime generals, the tarnished stars of yesterday's show-business and the memoirs of forgotten politicians, their perceptions polished by hindsight. Books were scattered everywhere. Some had toppled over, some were pushed sideways on to the shelves and some were on the floor as if discarded. It was as if an unexpected emergency had interrupted work here. As I passed through the low doorways from one shadowy chamber to another, I might have been exploring a prehistoric tomb, and the; depredations of robbers long since gone.

I recognized some of the books — they were positioned exactly as they had been when I was here a year or more ago. So was the Swede. The Swede was a professional pilot. Physically powerful and unquestionably courageous, but by nature cautious. It was the perfect temperament for a man who had landed aircraft in total darkness on unfamiliar terrain, and flown out again. Systematic and serious, he was racked by the chronic back-aches and haemorrhoids that went with the flyer's trade. Once he'd been a beautiful young man — you could see the traces of it — but neglected teeth, a roseate nose and thinning hair now made him just another senior citizen. He was wearing a new Burberry trenchcoat, a matching tweed hat and tartan scarf: a totemic tribute to the British Tourist Authority. When I came upon him at the appointed spot in the cellar he was standing under a crudely lettered sign, 'Bible Studies', Although seemingly engrossed in a heavy leather-bound volume, he looked up and pushed the book back on to the shelf. 'Always Bible Studies, Swede,' I said. 'Why is that?' One hand was in the pocket of his beige trenchcoat until he brought it out to flourish i\ huge Colt Navy revolver, an antique gun that I knew to be of lethal accuracy. 'Grab air!' 'Don't be a tiresome fool, I'm not in the mood for jokes.' 'Bang, bang. You're dead.' He was short and weather-beaten, his spoken English marked by a nasal intonation that he had acquired in America. 'Yes, I know. Do that to one of our newer kids and they will waste you.' 'It's a replica. I bought it in a store selling model cars and planes. It's a perfect repro. Isn't that neat? Exactly like the real thing. Look.' He offered me the gun. It was a detailed reproduction. Only its light weight betrayed it. I gave it a glance and passed it back to him. I suppose it is in the nature of men who fly that they retain some childish faith in gadgets. Otherwise they might start believing in gravity. 'It went well . . . that pick-up I did for you.' 'Yes,' I said. It wasn't like him to mention past jobs. What was he looking for: a medal? a commendation? a pension? By now he should have learned how much the Department hated anyone they termed 'hangers-on', and that meant anyone who expected proper recompense. 'It was your brother-in-law, wasn't it? That nervous little fellow we brought out?' 'No,' I said. 'That's what I heard.'

'Heard? Heard from who?' I asked. He played with the gun, aiming it at the light bulbs and at the door. 'We aviators get around.' He looked at me: 'Why all this special secrecy? Why London? Why not contact me through your man in Stockholm? Were you in trouble, Bernd?' 'Listen to me, Swede,' I said, and told him briefly what I wanted him to do. A straightforward air pick-up task, the sort of job he'd been doing for twenty years. 'Is this for the Department?' 'Do you think I'm going private?' 'It will cost a lot of money. Whatever way we do it, it will cost.' 'I know.' 'In the old days the Irish Sea was a milk run. But since your Irish rebels started bringing in their Armalites and Semtex, the British have pointed their low-level radar that way, and keep it manned day and night.' He pushed his gun into his pocket. 'Where do I pick up your people? England? Where do I tell flying control I'm going? Don't ask me to drop into some neglected little wartime strip by night, I've given up those jobs where you ground-loop around some potholes a mile deep and then hit a combine harvester. Is it worth it, Bernd? I mean, there's no passport control between England and the Irish Republic. Immigration scarcely glance at you. I hear it's a walk-through. What are you doing smuggling people across the water by plane?' 'It's not so easy. Immigration is still intact. Boats are conspicuous, and as soon as you mention Ireland they think you are in the IRA, and get on the phone to the police.' 'Bring a speedy little Irish boat over. No?' 'Even more conspicuous,' I said. 'Outboard motors and other valuable stuff are stolen, so these coastal communities are always watching out for passing strangers who might be about to rip off the boats.' He scratched his face. 'The smaller the better then. It might be possible to rent a plane from one of those little flying clubs in East Anglia or somewhere. Cash, no questions asked. I don't know. I'll have to enquire into it. How soon are you wanting to set this one up?' 'Soon. As soon as possible.' 'Then clubs are out. They don't get going until the weather brightens a bit. Even renting a decent commercial ship isn't easy at this time of year.'

'Yes,' I said. For him it would be complicated. He would have to do it using bogus identification and all the fake papers needed in Europe to get and fly an aircraft. Lately some rumours had been circulating that the Swede was ready to do all kinds of things that once he would have declined — drugs, arms and gold — and people were saying that he was becoming a lot less discriminating in his choice of clients. That's the sort of nasty things the rumours were saying. I didn't believe them of course, but when freebooters like the Swede grow old you can never be sure which way they will go. And the childish fascination he showed with his imitation gun was not reassuring. He said: 'It's not for the Yanks, is it?' 'No.' 'Because I won't work for the Yanks any more. They make their detailed plans and then, when the time comes, they turn everything on its tail. I don't work for the Yanks.' 'Yes, I know,' I said. In fact: the man everyone called the Swede was German, a Rhinelander named Franz Bender. In 1944 he was a young civilian pilot working for Messerschmitt at Augsburg. When the war ended, American air force specialists went and grabbed the Messerschmitt jet fighters, the engineers, designers and the pilots too. I can only guess what stories he told them, but the truth was that he was only qualified on light planes. But the Americans believed him. They found American army uniforms to fit them all and smuggled them back to the US. I don't know if he ever had to prove he could fly one of those wartime jets, but they kept him on. He lived on the American base at Wright Field for nearly three years, teaching what he knew about flying and servicing jet planes, and making up the rest. He was good at translating Luftwaffe training manuals into American-style English. They paid him a generous civilian salary; gave him a car and an apartment. He had lots of girlfriends. He was a good-looking kid and his accent delighted them. Then one night, coming back from a party, a cop pulled him over for speeding. He had no driver's licence, no social security card and, when he admitted he was an alien, not even a passport to prove who he was. The cop was a tough vet from the 82nd Airborne and not sympathetic to Germans in any shape or form. Neither did much sympathy come from the other officials Franz encountered. The war was over and those American pals of his, who might have pulled strings to help him, had become civilians and disappeared. No one was prepared to help

him. US Immigration held him in custody for almost six months, but no lawyer stuck with him and he was deported to Germany. Although the charges against him were dropped he was banned from entering the States ever again. He'd never forgiven the Americans for what he regarded as an act of betrayal. 'Perhaps you are making a big production out of it,' I said. 'Couldn't we have a wealthy Swedish national, in a Swedish-registered aircraft, on holiday — flying here and there to amuse his friends?' Still waving the gun around he suddenly said: 'It's your kids, isn't it Bernd?' If he had shot a hole in the Information Please Almanac for 1965, and made it bleed, he could not have shaken me more. Was it that obvious? Did everyone know so much about my personal life that they could guess what I might do next? 'Give over,' I said. 'They will find them and send them back. It's the Hague Convention: custody hearings always take place in the jurisdiction where children are normally resident. What's more, those stupid judges always send the kids to the country where they have spent most time. I know, my cousin went through that stuff. The judge was a clown, and the social services led him by the nose all the time. They'll get you in the end like they did him.' 'Do you charge for this kind of advice? Or does it go with the air ticket?' He shrugged: 'Okay. It's no concern of mine, but don't ask me to get involved.' 'Just steer the big bird, Swede.' 'Are you sure you are not in trouble, Bernd?' 'I told you, no,' I said. 'With your people? Or the opposition? You want to disappear, I'll tell you many places a million times better than Ireland.' I didn't answer. He stared at me while his mind whirled. 'Or are you going to run across to Cork and climb aboard that Aeroflot connection that flies direct to Havana?' Slowly he smiled. 'You cunning bastard. And from Cuba where?' 'Why all these questions?' The Swede had always been taciturn and positive, now he had become a garrulous fool. 'Because it all stinks, Bernd,' he said feelingly. 'The way you tell it, it stinks. I've never had worse vibrations than I'm getting now.' He took off his new hat with a sigh, and rubbed the bright red line it had left on his forehead. 'You need a size larger hat,' I said. 'Or maybe a size smaller head.'

He shuffled his feet, gave me a silly smile and then looked at his shoes. We both knew that he'd have to do it. I wouldn't have compromised myself in this way unless I'd been sure of him. Over the years the Department had given him a steady supply of well-paid jobs. Whatever he suspected about this being a private job, he wasn't likely to risk losing a contact like me: 'Look, Bernd. We've known each other a long time and we've both done each other a few favours over the years, so I'm not sure which of us owes what to who. But the only reason I am standing here indulging you in this mad idea is because I know there is not the slightest chance of your getting anyone else to even think about taking it on.' 'Short take-off and landing. Single engine I think; there's not much room at the Irish end. Grass, of course, but it's used by a club so there's no obstructions worse than hedges. I'll get someone to take a close look at its condition when we get nearer the time.' He didn't reply for a moment, then he said: 'This is not Nintendo; this is not a compute;' game we are playing: zap the pixels and the screen goes dark. Putting an airplane down on to a garbage dump in pitch darkness is for keeps. Pilots don't benefit from their mistakes, Bernd. Pilots don't benefit from their mistakes because the poor bastards don't live long enough after the first mistake to benefit.' I'd heard it all before of course. These black-sky pilots liked you to know they were earning their fees. 'Okay, Swede,' I said. 'Put away the violin.' 'I can keep my mouth shut,' he said. 'I flew the plane for your friend Volkmann that night when it all happened. I kept that quiet, didn't I? You didn't know that, did you?' 'No,' I said, and my ears were flapping. I was trying to remember if he had met Werner., and if so where and when. 'Did Volkmann fly that night?' 'Not Volkmann. The plane wasn't intended for him, he was just the one who sent me the order. The plane was for your buddy Prettyman.' 'Prettyman?' 'Don't play dumb, Bernd. Jay Prettyman, the Department's arm's-length hatchet nun. The white-faced one -the spooky guy with no eyebrows.' 'Yes, Jay Prettyman. I know him.' 'Of course you know him. He was one of your close buddies, wasn't he?' 'I don't have any close buddies,' I said.

'And I'm beginning to understand why,' said the Swede. 'He briefed me. I was to wait for him to arrive no matter how long. I had a package for him. He was to climb aboard and I would fly him out to England. The timing was important. They found an early-morning slot for me at Gatwick. I didn't want to get there too early and attract a lot of attention with the flight-control people. They are all Gestapo.' 'Yes,' I said. The Swede regarded all authority with contempt. Even the flight controllers were classified as mortal enemies rather than saviours. 'Tell me more.' 'It was almost light before anyone arrived. When the car came it wasn't Prettyman. The arrangement was that Prettyman would be riding a bicycle. I'd take the bicycle with us. It gave him a chance to hide the car away somewhere. I'd taken my seats out to make space for it. I'd even tried a bicycle inside to make sure there was no difficulty getting it through the door.' Good careful Swede. 'But it was a car that arrived?' 'I guessed something had gone badly wrong. Your wife was being extracted by road, wasn't she?' 'Yes,' I said. 'And who was in the car?' 'A woman. She wouldn't fly with me. She just told me to get out: of there as soon as possible. She told me to go home and forget about it. She said I'd be paid a bonus for being kept waiting. I knew that was bullshit. Did you ever hear of those bastards paying a black-sky for being delayed?' 'Who was it? Someone you recognized?' 'I don't know,' he said. 'I gave her the package and I took off out of there.' 'Don't start playing smart-ass with me, Swede.' 'I said I don't know. That means I don't know. Got it?' He was suddenly aggressive as he perhaps realized that he was saying more than he intended, 'You are too old, and too goddamned scarred, and too poor to start handing over packages to people you don't know. How did she identify herself?' He waved his long-barrelled gun. 'Passport. Mrs Pretty-man. Valid UK passport. What was I to do?' 'Don't whine. What was in the package?'

'I don't know. It was sealed. It was a locked case. It weighed a ton. I gave it to her and she beat it right: away. Mrs goddamned Prettyman climbed into her car without even a thank-you or goodbye. It was a long time before I got it figured out.' 'What did you figure out, Swede?' 'It was some kind of hit. It was never intended that I should fly Prettyman out of the re. What would I be doing with a package for him? Hell, we were on our way to Gatwick. What was in that package that he had to have it on the airplane? His make-up? His vitamin pills?' The Swede laughed. 'No, Prettyman was involved in a hit. I was there to collect the corpse. My guess is that the case contained identity papers for the one they were going to kill. That's why it was all so secret. That's why Prettyman had to get it.' 'Have you seen Prettyman since?' 'I never spoke about it from that day to this. I know how to keep my mouth shut.' 'Until now,' I said. Swede seemed suddenly to regret his indiscretion. He drew himself up like a soldier getting ready to receive a medal, or be kissed on both cheeks. Or both. 'I will need at least a month to make the preparations,' he said. 'I will need someone to help at the English end. Someone with a bit of authority.' 'I brought some cash for you.' I'd brought a sealed envelope containing two thousand pounds in twenties. Now I handed it to him. He took the envelope and carelessly pushed it away in an inside pocket. 'I'll need at least five grand up front and I won't be able to give you much of a refund if you cancel. It will have been used by that time. And once I deliver your passengers I take off and that's the end of our deal.' 'Did I ever do it any other way?" 'You're crazy, Bernd.' 'They are my kids,' I said. 'Your passengers,' he corrected me, determined not to be a party to my crime. 'Have you told them what you intend? Don't surprise them at the last minute, will you, eh? I don't want to be struggling with unwilling youngsters. That could make for real trouble.' 'Only four beats to the bar, Swede. You just drive the plane; leave the passenger manifest to me, right?' 'It's the best way,' he said, with a silly smile on his face.

It was only then that it dawned on me. 'You bastard. You're as drunk as a skunk.' 'Naw, naw, naw,' he said. I stepped forward to slap him, or rattle him, I'm not sure what. He waved the huge replica Colt at me in a way more comical than threatening. 'Don't shake the pin-table machine, or you won't get your peanuts,' he said. 'If you let me down, Swede, I'll kill you.' 'Yah, yah. I know what you're like.' It didn't sound like warm approval. 'Gabrielle left me,' he said sorrowfully. 'A marketing development analyst, he calls himself. What's that? What the hell does a development analyst do? He's just a youngster. She says he makes a hundred thousand dollars a year. Can you believe it?' 'I can believe it,' I said. I'd never heard of Gabrielle; I didn't know if she was his wife or his; girlfriend, or his pet piranha. But whatever she was, I could easily believe she'd want to get away from him. 'Gabi! Gabi!' He said it more loudly to help me remember. 'The one you borrowed the car from.' 'Oh, yes.' I remembered now. Gabi Semmler, a thirty-year-old Berliner who worked as a private secretary to an air charter company with which the Swede wanted to do business. I had in fact seen her in Berlin quite recently. I wondered if that was before, during or after the break-up. But I didn't wonder about it very much. 'Don't worry, my old Bernd. Swede won't spill your beans. Swede never lets you down.' 'Sober up,' I said. 'And make it quick.' 'Yah.' He put the muzzle of the long-barrelled gun against his own temple and shouted 'Bang' loudly enough to make me jump. 'Come along, Swede. Time to go walkies. Put away your toys.' It was terrible weather. We emerged into Charing Cross Road just as a thunderbolt ripped the dark sky apart with a jagged blue line. The crash of its thunder echoed all along the street. Cars, delivery vans, black taxis and the red double-decker buses, glistening with rain, were suddenly frozen by the lightning's flash. Gutters, swollen and turbulent, swept fleets of litter to the maelstrom of the drain. The ferocious downpour made tall stalks on the pavement, and there was a clatter of noise as rain hit the shopwindow glass and drenched me. The Swede came into the street and we both huddled in the shelter of a shop doorway, trying to spot an available taxi-cab.

'Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that head of yours, Bernd,' the Swede said. 'Is this a dream of a new life far away?' 'Tell people your dreams, and they never come true,' I said. 'Yah, yah, yah,' said the Swede and laughed. He had an awful laugh; like the bray of an angry mule. Suddenly he spotted a cab. He ran into the street, dodging between the cars as they braked and swerved to avoid him, and all the time he bellowed 'Taxi! Taxi!' to get the driver's attention. 'Heathrow: terminal one,' he shouted to the driver as he climbed inside. He gave me a brief salute of thanks — or was it mockery? — before sliding the cab window closed. I watched him go, suspecting that as soon as he was out of sight he'd tell the driver some other destination. Then a white Ford Transit pulled away from the kerb and into the traffic. It bore the lettering that proclaimed it to be from a supplier of luxury foodstuffs to restaurants. The driver's face was familiar to me but I couldn't place him. One of the Department's corps de ballet perhaps. If they were tailing the Swede, I wondered if I'd been logged too. I preferred to believe it must be some sidekick of the Swede's. I told myself he was apt to be over-cautious even when meeting old friends. Engaging a minder was usually a sign of bad conscience, or bad company, or carrying too much cash. I finally got a cab. My next stop was Mayfair and the office of an estate agent. I told the cabdriver I was still looking for the precise address, and let him go round Grosvenor Square twice while closely watching the other traffic. That uncomfortable, unhealthy and neurotic paranoia that had helped keep me alive so long, made me think I was being followed. I wondered if the Ford Transit had not been Swede's man after all, but rather the changeover vehicle for my tail. But if there was someone tailing me now, he was an expert. Or perhaps simply someone who knew what my appointments were, and got there ahead of me. I was ten minutes late. One of my father-in-law's many lawyers was waiting too, and tapping his fingers on a thick bundle of papers. In 1983, when Fiona suddenly abandoned me and the children, and departed to East Germany, our home was rented to four young Americans. But now the Americans were moving out. Three of them were posted to banks in Singapore and Hong Kong, and the last remaining tenant couldn't find anyone to share the rent. The agent wanted me to sign papers reassigning the property to my father-in-law. I had little alternative, for the major financial investment in the house had been made by him: our investment had been no more than love and labour.

The agent's office was an elegant room furnished with antique furniture, with framed engravings and maps of historic London on the walls. Maps are of course the decor adopted by men reluctant to display their taste in art. The only discordant note was struck by the grey plastic word-processor that occupied a table in the corner and buzzed. 'So good of you to be so punctual,' said the estate agent, as if he'd been warned that I might not show up at: all. He smiled reassurance and I smiled right back at him. My father-in-law wasn't a crook; Fiona and I would come out of it with reasonable compensation for our slice of the mortgage, but I hated the way he always did these things through his minions. Why the sudden summons to this office? Why couldn't he have discussed the Duke Street property with us when we were with him at the weekend? I signed over the pencilled crosses.

*

When I returned to work Dicky was waiting for me. He was sitting in his office, a large comfortable room with the skins of genuine lions stretched across the floor, and a view across the trees from the two windows. Between the windows he had positioned his lovely rosewood table. The top of it was virtually clear. It was Dicky's oft-stated belief that ordinary office desks, telephones and word-processors were not necessary for work, and for the sort of work that Dicky did, they weren't. He had only one telephone, and the only reason he had a fax machine here was because he had recently been deferring his choice of lunch place until he'd studied the faxed daily menus of his favourite haunts. 'Have coffee,' he suggested. It was a significant offering, and demonstrated that Dicky had something important to ask me. The coffee appeared from the next room, where Dicky stored all the ugly office machinery and the pretty young girls with whom Daphne competed. 'You saw Uncle Silas?' 'Yes,' I said. I was sipping coffee and sitting in the soft white leather armchair that Dicky had recently installed for his visitors. There were new curtains too, and the official sepia portrait of the sovereign had been put into a rosewood frame, so that it matched his table.

'He sent for you?' And in case I didn't understand: 'Silas Gaunt sent for you?' Dicky sat behind his table with his arms folded. He was wearing a blue pinstripe suit of very ordinary style. I guessed he'd been with the politicians. 'There was a garbled message . . .' I explained. I thought he was going to complain about my taking time off to go there without asking his permission. 'He's been refusing to see anyone.' Dicky touched his lips with his fingertips. It was a gesture he often used, but I sometimes saw it as some kind of unconscious fear that he was saying too much. 'Silas refused to see the D-G last week. He said he was ill. When Bret tried to meet with him he was extremely abusive.' I savoured the coffee. It came from the shop of Mr Higgins. Dicky said it was the best coffee in England and Dicky was very fussy about coffee. 'Ye gods, Bernard. Don't just sit there drinking coffee and smiling at me. I'm asking you a question.' 'What are you asking, Dicky?' 'Why you? Why would Uncle Silas send for you while he refuses to see anyone from the top floor? Even the D-G. He told Bret he wouldn't even let the prime minister into his home. He was swearing at Bret like a drunken sailor. Bret recorded the call. He was really insulting. So why you, Bernard? What's it all about?' 'He wanted to talk about my father.' 'Is that all?' 'Yes, that was all,' I said. 'All right, don't go taking offence at every little thing. No reflection on your father.' Dicky's phone rang. 'It's for you, Bernard.' He: handed it to me. It was Bret on an internal line. With that brisk and unmistakable transatlantic accent he had no need to identify himself: 'Bernard.' The accent on the second syllable. 'There's been an irritable female caller on an outside line. Desperately trying to reach Fiona.' 'She's in Rome,' I said. The terrorist symposium.' 'Sure, I know that,' said Bret imperiously. 'I sent her there. Do you want to talk to Gloria? She will tell you who took the call.' 'Is it something for Dicky?' I said. I couldn't understand why I should be suddenly handling my wife's day-to-day workload.

'It's not work,' said Rensselaer. 'It's a family matter. Private.' His voice was uncharacteristically concerned as he added: 'You haven't: got a car here, have you?' 'No.' 'Take Gloria's.' To do what?' 'If you need it, if you need it,' said Bret, almost losing his cool. Then, more calmly, he said: 'Gloria has her car here. She will sort it out, Bernard. She's good at this sort of thing.' At what sort of thing, I was about to ask, but: he had already hung up his phone. I made hurried excuses to Dicky and went to the office I was using. I was looking up Gloria's number in the internal directory when she put her head round the door. She was wearing a crimson suit. Her blonde hair was drawn back and her forehead covered in a neat fringe. The change in her appearance was startling. 'Bernard!' she said. 'Where have you been? I've been phoning everywhere trying to locate you. You don't have a mobile phone; there was no contact number. You just disappeared. I had security go to every room in the building.' She wasn't smiling; she seemed annoyed. 'I do that sometimes,' I said. She stepped into the room and pushed the door behind her closed as if about to confide a secret to me. 'Did Bret tell you?' Now I could see her more clearly. She appeared to be brimming over with rage. Her face was full and rounded with it, her lips pouting, and her big brown eyes wide open and glistening with animosity. 'What? Tell me what?' 'The school phoned. I phoned them back. It may be nothing.' She stopped before bringing out the rest of it in a rush. The school minibus went off the road and turned right over. It's mostly just cuts and bruises but some of the children — five, the matron said — will be kept in hospital overnight.' 'Billy's school?' 'Yes. I'm sorry, I should have said that. Yes, Billy's school. A collision with a motor-cycle . . . on the way to a football game with a school in south London. The driver's badly hurt and the motor-cyclist is in intensive care. Oh, Bernard!' 'Where is he?'

She was trying to make it easier for me, I could see that. 'We're not sure that Billy is hurt. There were several ambulances and the children were taken to different hospitals. One of the girls downstairs said it was on the radio. I phoned the BBC but they said it must have been some local news bulletin.' 'Do you know which hospitals?' 'The school said they would telephone again as soon as they hear more about it. But I think it's best we go to the school. Other parents are there already. They will know everything that's happening.' 'It's all right. I know the way.' 'Let me drive, Bernard. Look, your hands are trembling.' 'Don't be silly,' I said, but I found myself pushing my hands into my pockets in case she was right. 'Your in-laws are away. Their housekeeper, or whoever it was I spoke to, said she didn't know how to contact them.' They're at a fat-farm. They don't leave contact numbers; they don't like to be disturbed there.' 'I'll leave all this stuff; I'll get you to the school.'

*

It was a nerve-racking journey, with Gloria driving like a Mexican car thief and the rain beating down and the traffic jams that always result from such storms. Gloria was giving all her attention to the road as an excuse not to engage in conversation, but I couldn't mistake how much the news had upset her. With other circumstances it might have proved a perfect opportunity to confide in her. I strapped in tight, sat back and looked at her. It was no good denying that I needed her. I needed her now, when the news had brought me low, and I badly needed to hear her say she loved me. I wanted to hear her say that she would gladly exchange her life in England for some lack-lustre penny-pinching life with me. A life in some distant foreign land without an extradition treaty. But I didn't broach any of these complex and far-reaching matters. I sat huddled in her car, an old Saab that she'd got ready for rally-driving but which had blown up on a reconnaissance trip

before even starting the first rally. Now it had become her London runabout, a fierce roaring beast which called for endless tinkering and a driving technique that catered to its many vices. Billy's private school was distinguished more for its high fees and exclusivity than for its academic excellence. It had been chosen by Fiona's father. The school had made its home in a fine old creeper-covered mansion long since adapted, subdivided and bent to the needs of academe. When we arrived its gravel forecourt was crowded with the hastily parked cars of distraught parents. The marques of BMW, Volvo, Mercedes and Rolls measured the aspirations of parents whose faith in the government's oft-promised meritocracy was less than absolute. The school matron was a plump grey-haired woman in a high-necked white blouse, pleated tweed skirt and flat-heeled shoes. She had been assigned to greet with a weary smile, and copious sweet tea and biscuits, those relatives who had flouted the instruction to stay at home by the phone. Gloria and I were sitting in the staff room under a colourful poster depicting the fiercer members of various endangered species of the animal world. I was on my second cup of tea, and selecting a jam-filled biscuit from the plate Gloria offered, when a thin young man in a mauve track-suit told us his name was Hemingway and that he was my son's house master, while studying a clipboard and avoiding our eyes. 'I don't think your son was on the bus,' he said, still looking down at his paperwork. 'He's certainly not in the football team.' When I replied that I thought he was, Mr Hemingway ran a nicotine-coloured fingertip down the typewritten list on his board and said: 'His name isn't here. So he couldn't have been on the bus. No spectators went along; just the team and two teachers.' 'If he's not on the team and wasn't on the bus, why did you phone?' I said. 'Phone?' He looked up at me. 'My wife's office. Someone called my wife and left a message.' 'But not from here,' he said, tucking the clipboard under his arm. 'No one from here phoned any of the parents.' 'But . . .' 'No one from the school phoned. We are responding to calls but we are not alarming people.' He smiled. He was obviously selected as a man who would face irate parents resolutely. 'The Head was saying to me — only half an hour ago — that it was incredible that the word got

around so quickly. No parents or next-of-kin have been contacted by us. It was on the radio of course, and parents phone around their friends. It must have been a friend who phoned you, not the school. The Head decided to wait until we had a proper report from the hospital, and a list of who will be held there overnight. It still hasn't come, but as you see there are at least two dozen parents here.' 'How can I be sure about Billy? That he's safe?' 'The little lad must be here. On weekdays no boys are permitted to leave the school grounds without written permission. Why don't I send one of the boys to find him? This afternoon he should be at the social awareness class . . . ah, no, Mrs Phelan is ill. Wait a moment, your son's class were swimming . . . no, I tell a lie: current affairs . . .' They found him eventually. Billy was in the library, sitting at the back near the heating radiator, memorizing the names of the world's highest peaks for a geography test. He was wearing shorts, long socks and a T-shirt with the slogan 'Bad Spellers of the World — Untie'. He was a different child here in the environment of his school, his hair parted carefully and his shoes polished. And his movements were diffident and restrained. For a moment I found it difficult to recognize him as my little Billy. 'I'm sorry, Dad,' he said. 'We were worried,' I said, embracing him. He kissed Gloria. She suppressed a little sob and then blew her nose loudly on a small handkerchief that, after some rummaging, she had tugged from her handbag. 'They said I could be a reserve. One of the half-backs had a wisdom tooth seen to. But he got better too quickly.' 'Would you and Mrs Samson like to take your son off for the evening?' said Hemingway, parting Billy on the head and smiling at Gloria. 'He could miss prep, I'm sure.' 'Yes,' said Gloria, assuming the role of Mrs Samson effortlessly, 'we'd like to do that.' 'Wow. Thank you, sir. Would that be all right, Dad? There's a super new Chinese restaurant opened in the high street, where that rotten old second-hand bookshop used to be. It starts serving early: the Pekin Duck it's called — but my friends all call it the Piping Hot.' 'Sounds good,' I said, looking quizzically at Gloria. She nodded. 'It's Gloria's car,' I explained to Billy.

'That great Saab. Yes, you can see where the rally numbers used to be. And a car-phone antenna. It's super. What tyres do you have?' 'Go and get your coat and a scarf,' I said. 'And a sweater, it's cold.' I looked at Gloria. I didn't have to say anything. It was clear that Billy had seen us arrive, and gone off to hide in the library. 'Who cares if he's in the football team?' I said to Gloria. 'He wants you to love him,' she said. 'He wants to do something to make you pleased.' 'I do love him,' I said testily. Was I such an ogie? It was one of those days when everyone was speaking in riddles. 'And be proud of him.' 'I hate football. I hate all games,' I said, 'even chess.' Mr Hemingway's hearing must have been remarkably acute, for I noticed him stiffen as I said this, although his back was towards me as he stood with other parents on the far side of the room. 'Billy doesn't really like Chinese food,' said Gloria. 'Insist we go to that place on the bypass, it's called The Old Barn or The Manoir or something phoney like that. He can have hamburger and spaghetti and that dessert with apples that they set fire to at the table.' 'So why did he say Chinese?' I hissed. Perhaps I was speaking too loud; people were looking at us. 'You said you liked Chinese one day in Islington when it was raining and we were looking for somewhere to eat lunch before going to a matinee of Hamlet. Billy was doing it at school. Remember?' 'Oh, yes.' What a memory she had. I would have given six months' salary to have been able to remind her of what she was wearing on that lovely perfect happy day that I'd entirely forgotten. 'If you two — you and Billy — would just stop trying to do nice things for each other, you . . .' She never finished what she was about to say, for Billy had made a lightning change of clothes, and was now dressed in grey flannel uniform with the school's Latin motto on the breast pocket. He was running down the stairs swinging his raincoat in his hand. The fact that we took Billy for a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs did not deprive him of the chance to make jokes, and parade his learning, using the name of the new Chinese eating place. The jokes ranged from oodles of noodles to snub-nosed Pekingese poodles and on to Peking man, and if we didn't laugh enough, Billy explained the reference to us. And he did it in exhaustive detail. He was, in many ways, very like me.

With every last strand of spaghetti devoured and every crepe flamed, folded and eaten, with jokes all told and Saab tyres examined, Billy was delivered back to his school dormitory. Gloria drove me back to London. It was a perfect opportunity to have the serious talk with her that I had been putting off so long. Perhaps I didn't choose the most prudent way to begin: 'I'm going to get him away from that bloody school. He'll grow up to be a detestable little snob if he stays there. Did you notice that joke about the slow-witted policeman?' 'Oh, Bernard! Whatever are you on about? You constantly make jokes about people — dim stockbrokers and greedy politicians. Don't be so captious. Billy will never be a snob like that. He is lovely and full of fun.' 'Sometimes I feel like running off with him,' I said, putting a toe into the territory as lightly as I knew how. Gloria Kent, of Hungarian extraction, immediately sensed the danger: you don't grow up a foreign girl in an English school without knowing there is a minefield on both sides of every English social exchange. 'He would never go,' she said. 'You sound very certain.' 'He'd be miserable. He doesn't know you well enough, Bernard.' I could tell from her tone that she was expecting a rush of objections from me, but I let it go and waited. 'He loves you, and he knows that you love him, but you don't know him really well.' 'I know him.' 'You know the child he used to be.' I thought of Mr Hemingway. Billy had spoken of his house master several times over dinner. I don't say Billy hero-worshipped Mr Hemingway, or even admired him, but any hint of praise from Mr Hemingway was an accolade that Billy was keen to share with us. 'That would come,' I said. Gloria wasn't so sure. 'He has his friends and a set routine. You can tell that from everything he said tonight. You may regard that school as a factory producing Philistine pin-brained Englishmen of a sort you heartily despise, but it's Billy's only reality. And he likes it.' 'Thanks, Gloria.'

'Did you want me to baby you? You waited too long. Take him back to your fancy Mayfair apartment, but he'll be a stranger. It will all take time, Bernard. Forget any idea about waving a magic wand. He's a young man. He has a mind of his own.' 'I suppose you are right,' I said through gritted teeth. 'Would your wife give her phone number to the school?' said Gloria suddenly, as if she'd been thinking about it. 'No,' I said. 'And not to some other parent?' 'Especially not to some other parent.' 'Then who phoned the office?' 'And why?' I added. She controlled the car with a manic skill that never quite became frenzy. As we sped along the shiny suburban streets the neon lights made halos of bright pink and blue and green around her blonde hair and painted her face with savage patterns. It didn't seem like the moment to ask Gloria if she'd like to run away with me. But in the event I didn't have to; she read my mind. And she wasn't going to let me out of the car without telling me how well she read it. 'You are not in Berlin, Bernard,' she said as we pulled up in front of my apartment. I reached for the door catch but not too strenuously. 'You can't handle two women in that psychotic way you run from one side of the Wall to the other.' I didn't answer. I could see she had something she had to say. 'I know you love me, and I love you too,' she said in the speedy perfunctory small-print way that advertisers deal out the mandatory health warnings. 'But you already have a wife and children. Now you must let me alone, and let me make my own life.' 'But Gloria . . .' She tapped the accelerator just enough to make the engine growl. 'Let me alone, Bernard,' she implored frantically. 'For God's sake, let me alone.' She stared straight ahead as I climbed out of the car. 'Goodnight, Gloria,' I said. 'I don't want to hurt you.' She didn't turn her head and she didn't answer; she just drove away.

5 Berwick House, England I resented being sent to London Debriefing Centre to squeeze some reactions out of my brotherin-law George Kosinski. He was being detained on a warrant: which was the Department's way of saying imprisoned without promise of trial. That he was held in a lovely old eighteenthcentury manor house, and permitted to wander in its seven acres of lawns and woodland, to say nothing of its rose bushes, orchard and vegetable garden, did not alter the fact that Berwick House was surrounded by a high wall. Or change the fact that the innocuous-looking men working in the grounds were armed. My unease was of course compounded by the fact that I had personally brought George from Poland. And I had submitted a report that described his longterm service as an agent of its communist: government. That had been acted upon immediately; my other suggestions were ignored. I'd put aside my personal feelings about: George. My anger at his treachery and stupidity had abated. Of course he was small fry by some measures, but even a low-echelon agent such as George could, if handled skilfully, provide valuable information about contacts and safe houses and all the mumbo-jumbo of enemy activities here in Britain. George had not been handled skilfully: he'd been shelved. That was partly because any such vital information he gave us would have to be handed to 'Five', the Department's rivals, and give them a chance to outshine us when the time came to boast to our political masters. So I wasn't in a happy frame of mind as I turned into the gates of Berwick House. The tyres scrunched on the gravel path as I stopped for the identity check. I pulled my card from my wallet but I didn't need it. The barrier was raised immediately and we went straight through. I suppose the two guards recognized the official car and driver, and one of them seemed to recognize me. He scowled There had been a drastic effort to clean the place up since my last visit. The ancient army huts, and their pervading smell of tar preservative, had disappeared from what once had been the croquet lawn. 'Keep off the grass' signs were staked into the mud, erected there in the hope that

summer would bring grass enough to hide the huts' broken concrete foundations which had resisted the drills and bulldozers. The rain had stopped but water was dripping from the trees and there were deep puddles in the gravel drive. Two men in coveralls were fitting cables along the bed of the newly drained moat that surrounded the red-brick main building. The irises, lilies and bulrushes had been ripped out and stacked along the path, ready for the compost heap. As we went over the red-brick bridge to the courtyard, I could see the way the underwater alarms were being replaced with new technology. I wondered what it was costing. It didn't seem as if the Foreign Office cashiers were betting on an early end to the cold war. The dismal and draughty entrance hall provided more evidence of the many changes that Berwick House had undergone over the years. Its history was to be seen in the notices that defaced the lovely panelled walls. The earliest notice was poster-sized, protected by heavy glass and framed in oak. It declared Berwick House to be a 'prohibited place' by order of the Secretary of State (1911 Act, section three.) The typography was Victorian, its style like a sedate theatre playbill. Amended and supplemented by the Official Secrets Act of 1920 and 1939, it must have been fixed to the wall soon after Berwick House was taken over by the authorities in that week after war was declared. There were other notices, of varying age, dealing with everything from fire precautions to the playing of transistor radios and not smoking. Now that so many Home Office employees, security men and Special Branch officers were carrying hand-guns, there was a lock-up closet for guns, and bright new notices: 'Strictly No Firearms Beyond This Point'. On one of my previous visits they mislaid the Walther PPK I was carrying and tried to give me a nickel-plated Spanish Astra in its place. It took me an hour to sort it out. Since then I had always made a point of saying I was unarmed. Having signed the book, and noted that the previous visitor's signature was dated four days earlier, I collected my 'exit chit' and was taken up to see George. I was pleased to find that he had been assigned relatively comfortable rooms. Number five suite was one of the best accommodations, after the staff offices and Governor's apartment. It was large. Its position on a corner of the first floor provided two windows for the drawing-room and extensive views of the grounds. The room was exceptionally tidy; neurotically so. His red velvet slippers were placed alongside his chair, cushions plumped and exactly positioned, even the newspapers were neatly folded as if ready for resale. The book he was reading — The Last Grain Race by Newby — had a page

marked with a slip of newspaper. The book, and a case for his spectacles, were positioned upon the newspapers with care. George Kosinski was standing at the window, looking out at the bare trees and the high walls that surrounded the property. He took off his heavy spectacles as if to see me better. 'Bernard. They said you were coming.' His accent — the hard high pitch of London's docklands — revealed his origins, despite his West End clothes. George Kosinski was forty years old. A stocky, restless Londoner born of Polish parents, he had inherited all the moodiness and poetic melancholy of his forebears. He looked well but dispirited. He'd trimmed his moustache and cut his grey wavy hair shorter. Now, despite the well-cut pants, monogrammed shirt and soft Italian moccasin shoes, I did not see much of the flashy tycoon that I remembered from earlier days. 'I was ordered to come,' I told him. 'I knew that if you wanted to see me, you would have sent a message.' His quirky smile suggested that, should he ever find himself in need of help or sustenance, my name was not one that would naturally come to his mind. 'Shall we take a walk?' I said. He went across the room to get his coat. 'Wrap up, it's cold outside.' 'I haven't had a breath of fresh air for a week,' he said. It was not true. I had asked that he should not be allowed his daily walk for the two days before I arrived simply because I wanted him to feel a bit cooped up. Bit I knew from the record that he normally spent an hour outside each day. I knew what he ate, and what he complained about. I even knew how many times a day he went to the toilet. Detainee reports are thorough in some respects. 'I hate this place,' he said. 'I know,' I said. He could hardly hate it more than I did. There was never anything enjoyable about coming down here to hear the contrived fictions of men who saw the error of their ways only after getting caught. Yet the deeper reason I hated it so much was because of the odour of despair that visits here brought to my nostrils. Berwick House was the end of the trail for the men locked away here. Even those released without officially ordained punishment did not go unscathed. No one escapes the discontent that pitiless self-examination brings to those who try to serve two masters. Of the men I'd seen here, at least four eventually took their own life. Then there were the tragic cases, like Giles Trent, murdered in error when a disinformation plan went wrong. And Erich

Stinnes, a KGB man I killed in a messy exchange of rounds that sent his arterial blood gushing into one of my recurring nightmares.

*

George put on his coat and looked in a mirror to arrange his hat and cashmere scarf. It always encouraged a detainee to be taken away from the rooms where microphones could be hidden. London Debriefing Centre's handling of George had not been done properly. LDC staff never seemed to learn how important the preparation period was, and how much it affected the interrogation. George was not angry, he was not restless and he was not pacing up and down in frustration. It was too quiet and too comfortable here, and he had been given nothing to do. That gave him too much time to think. Thinking at night, when sleep is being lost, is good; but thinking in the daytime is bad. Opportunities for thinking were not desirable when you held a man such as George. Giving him time to reflect gave him time to reconsider, to invent cover stories, weave elaborate lies, suppress guilt and justify his treason. Furthermore I was not an experienced interrogator; I was just a member of George's family, 'I know why you came,' he said. We had walked around the walled vegetable garden in silence, apart from George identifying the dead and dying herbs that had been planted in an elaborate cruciform pattern. 'You want to know if Tessa was a part of it.' He bent to pick some leaves. 'Was she?' 'You don't care about me. It's Tessa you are worried about. Tessa and what she might have been hearing from your wife over the years. What she might have told me and what I might have passed along the line.' 'I can't say I've worried about that angle a great deal,' I told him. 'No? Then you'd better start worrying about it. You can bet that's the part of it your masters are worried about.' He threw away the leaf and pushed his glasses into place with his forefinger. They were always slipping down his nose. I don't know why he chose such heavy frames. 'Is that what they've been asking you here?' I said. I knew it wasn't; I'd seen the transcripts.

He pulled a face. 'Yes, and no. They go around and around. Yesterday we were talking about my school-days. One of them is a psychiatrist, complete with a slide show. And even a book of those damned ink-blot patterns. I thought those things were ancient history by now.' 'Rorschach test patterns. Yes, well that's normal routine,' I said, in case George had formed some kind of paranoid resentment about it. 'Tess was implicated right from the beginning,' said George. I didn't respond. 'Sorrel,' said George reaching down to pluck a large green leaf, crushing it in his hand and then sniffing at it. 'I suppose it grows all the year round. I didn't know that. Not much aroma.' 'Where were you at school, George? London I suppose, with an accent like yours. Was it a school in Poplar?' He swung his head round to stare up at me, hardly able to believe that I was not going to follow up his tempting nugget about the treason of his wife Tessa, and the possible involvement of me and my wife too. 'Yes, good old Poplar,' he said, stressing his cockney accent. 'You knew that of course. But they say a trial lawyer should never ask a question to which he doesn't already know the answer.' 'I'm not a lawyer,' I said. 'But you've done your homework, Bernard. And I admire the way you steer away from the subject of Tessa as if not interested.' 'It's not a matter of being interested, George. It's simply that I recognize it as a bit of bloody nonsense. You'll have to do better than that to get my undivided attention.' 'Will I, Bernard? Well, you deny it. You'll have plenty to deny by the time I've finishing spilling my guts to them.' 'For instance?' I said. He was getting intense now. That was what I wanted. He pretended to be giving all his attention to the herbs. Upon his open hand he had laid out an array of them, some curled and brittle and blackened by frost, others hard and green and aromatic. He prodded at the leaves with a fingertip, as if giving them all his attention. 'Mint. That one I don't recognize. Marjoram. Bay . . . but its real name is Laurus nobilis. Sometimes cookery writers translate it as laurel, but laurel leaves are a deadly poison.'

'And taste like hell,' I said affably, as if I didn't mind his absurd little herb recognition rigmarole. He looked at me quizzically. 'Like bitter almonds, at least that's what I read somewhere. It's the writers who make all the mistakes, Bernard. The people who worship little pieces of paper with writing on. The cooks and gardeners never get it wrong because they don't care what it's called.' I grunted. I suppose it was a spontaneous and clumsy attempt to show me how wrong it was to categorize him as an enemy. The truth, as he no doubt saw it, was that decent old George had tried to play some sort of game that wouldn't harm either side. I was able to guess the meaning underlying George's allegory only because nearly everyone locked up here persuaded themselves that the truth was something along those lines. '"For instance," you ask me,' he said. 'For instance, I could tell them about Tessa's relationship with that fellow Trent, the communist agent. He was one of your people, wasn't he? Then there was your meeting with that CIA maverick Posh Harry . . . a meeting you arranged in my offices in Southwark.' 'That was years ago, George.' I said it as calmly as I could. Locked up here and brooding upon the way I had brought him to book, George had lots of time, lots of motivation, and all the necessary ingenuity, to weave a thousand unconnected incidents into a web from which I wouldn't escape. Perhaps his fabrications wouldn't completely convince the interrogators, the DG or the Appeals Board that I was a traitor, but the result might give them an excuse to discharge me as unreliable without feeling guilty about it. 'These interrogators are not fools, George. They have come across spiteful nonsense before. Implicating friends and relatives — it's not unusual in our sort of business.' He threw the herbs away and rubbed his hands together and looked at me: 'No? How often do you have a prisoner here revealing what he knows about relatives who have top jobs in your "sort of business"? His sister-in-law? His brother-in-law? His wife? Tell me how often, Bernard. Oh, they'll listen. When I start talking, they'll listen. You can bet on that.' Now it was all coming out: overt threats delivered with malicious intensity. Concealed beneath George's assumed calm there was a desperate drowning man, one whose flailing would pull down with him anyone he could clutch. 'Not often,' I said. 'You're a special case.'

He nodded and smiled grimly. 'Yes, I am. So if it's a servile confession you've come here for, forget it. 'I'm not your implacable enemy, George,' I said. 'Your wisest course is to tell the truth.' I'd been sent here to Berwick House on Bret Rensselaer's instructions. Bret had told me to start him talking. Well, in that respect my visit certainly seemed to have been a success. The trouble was that George seemed to have focused all his animosity on me. 'You're right, Bernard. It's damned cold out here. Let's go back into the warm.' There was nothing to be gained from letting George use me as a punching bag for all his frustration and resentment. But while we were still in the garden and away from the microphones I tried to make my own position clear. 'Listen to me carefully, George,' I said. 'I came here today because I was ordered to come. But before coming I put away as much of my personal feelings as I could possibly repress. With great difficulty, I'm still doing that. But you choose to make it personal and threaten me. You threaten me with your lousy rotten lies and fairy stories.' George was looking at me with his eyes open. I think he had never seen me really angry before. 'Listen to me carefully, George. When you face the interrogators you tell them the truth, the whole truth and any excuses you can invent.' I grabbed his upper arm and squeezed as tight as I could. This hurt him I suppose, for he pulled a face but didn't cry out. 'But if you tell lies about me, I will beat you bloody. I won't kill you or even cripple you but I will hurt you, George.' I shook him so that his teeth rattled. I hoped there was no one watching us. 'Even if it costs me my job, my pension or six months in the nick, I will beat the daylights out of you. And I'll get to you even if I have to break down doors.' As soon as I loosened my grip on his arm he stepped well back from me. My words had been mild enough, but he must have seen the rage that I felt brimming up inside me. He'd seen it in my eyes, and in my face, for now he stared at me as if he was frightened to look away lest I assaulted him. Behind his spectacle lenses his eyes were bright and his cheeks pinched and pallid. 'You're a madman,' he said in a breathless voice. 'You should be put away in psychiatric care, Bernard. What's happened to you? I'm family; I'm family.' He touched his face as if I had slapped him. It was as if the mere thought of the physical beating had brought him pain. 'Don't Bernard me, you bastard.' I'd kept my anger under control for too long, and now I was on the verge of going wild. I took a deep breath and remained rooted there staring at him as I recovered my composure. I told myself that this wasn't the time and place; and that George

wasn't really the enemy. George was a nothing, a delivery boy, a kid from the paddling pool who'd fallen into the deep end. George was a child on a visit to the zoo, prodding a finger through the bars of the cage to distinguish moth-eaten fur rug from bad-tempered gorilla. Now he knew. But it was too late to make much difference. I didn't say anything else to him. I returned him to his room, got a 'body receipt' signature from the floor clerk, signed out, called for the car and went home.

*

I went directly back to London, apart from a brief stop off at a big hotel on London's outskirts. It called itself an inn, and this deception was furthered by the way some architect, who had OD'd on Hollywood Westerns, had provided it with a shiny interior of fake Victorian advertising mirrors and plastic panelling. There were pin-tables too: like glass comic books and flashing and clicking furiously, the sound echoing around the place that was empty of customers other than the driver and me. The driver stuck to orange juice but I needed a whisky. A large single malt: a Laphroaig. The barman could only find Glenfiddich, so I had two of those instead. Fortified with the smoky taste, I made a couple of calls from the public phone in the lobby. I liked public phones, they were more private than private ones, and the calls more or less untraceable. But none of the calls got any response at the other end. The Swede had not gone home. It made me angry to think he had taken my money and continued his drunken spree. God only knows where he was. His answering machine at his home in Sweden was switched off. There was no answer from the airfield he used, and his contact number in London was giving out the shrill sounds of a line that has been disconnected. I cursed my own stupidity. I'd heard rumours that the Swede went off on melancholy bouts of drunken roving, but I'd not believed them. For years our assignments together had found him a model of competence and sobriety. It was the big bundle of cash that had tempted him of course. But why did it have to be my money? I hung up the telephone and went into the toilet. The door banged behind me and I looked up. Two men — dressed in leather jackets and jeans — had followed me. Both looked like manual workers, but there was a marked age disparity. The elder man was about thirty-five. He stopped and stood with his back against the door to make sure we were not interrupted. He was a strong

man, taller than me, and with calloused hands and battered face. A boxer, judging by the stance he adopted. Boxers can never get out of the habit of standing with their toes turned in. The younger man was about twenty, with wavy hair and long sideburns. I'd only glanced at them. Now I went to the sink and turned both taps and took liquid soap into my hand as if I was about to wash. Keeping my head down over the bowl, I watched in the mirror as the younger man came up behind me. He thought he had me cold, so he was careless. I turned and slapped the liquid soap into his face. He must have thought it was ammonia or something harmful, for he reared away with his eyes closed and mouth open in a splutter of anger. I hit him hard in the belly, and gave him a jab in the nose as he bent forward. He dropped the knuckleduster he'd been holding and it landed on the tiles with a clatter. But the little guy was tough. He straightened up and shook his head and came at me again. He punched at me with the straight sort of blow that comes from a lot of time at the punching bag, and his fist connected with the side of my face as I ducked aside. It was lucky for me that he'd lost his brass knuckles, otherwise even that glancing blow would have sent me reeling. As it was, the pain of it rattled me. I grabbed at his jacket and held him as I tried to butt my head into his face, but the liquid soap I'd thrown at him was now all over the floor. I slipped on it and only kept my balance by hanging on to his jacket. There was something absurd about the way we waltzed around the tiled floor, slipping and sliding and punching and clinching with neither of us able to land a decisive blow. Under my coat, in a shoulder holster, I was carrying a sample of Heckler and Koch's best hardware. I'd been wearing it since the personal security alert. I had taken no notice of Dicky's taunts, figuring that the sort of hard men the other side were using lately might not accurately discern that I wasn't senior staff. As my feet found a drier piece of floor, I was steady enough to get a better hold on him. I slammed hi m backwards, pounding him into his partner with enough force to knock the breath out of both of them. As the younger one turned his upper body to avoid my blows, I kicked his knee. The toe of my shoe found the right place, so that his leg buckled and he dropped full-length to the floor. I kicked him again and his face went bloody. It was crude stuff but these were crude people. It gave me enough time to open my coat and get to my gun. Holding it tight I brought it round to slap the elder man in the side of the face. He was a tough old bird but the gun was heavy steel, and I hit him hard enough to cut him. He gasped with surprise as much as with the pain. It gave

me a chance to knee him hard in the balls. As he went down I slammed him again with the gun and took a pace backwards to wave it at them. The old one put his hands high enough to change the light bulbs. A VP70 is customarily carried with a round in the chamber, and you don't have to be Superman to fire off its eighteen rounds like a machine-gunner. 'Keep still, old man,' I told him. 'I'll waste you and laugh.' He didn't answer. I frisked him and then bent down to the youngster on the floor and made sure he didn't have a gun. I took his knuckleduster from where it had fallen and stuffed it up his nostrils. 'Next time I'll kill you,' I promised cheerfully. 'If not me, one of my friends will kill you. Either way, you wind up dead. You understand?' Neither of them replied, but I could see they got the idea. 'I should put a bullet into both of you. There is a drain here, and tiles, so it won't make a mess.' I let them think about it for a minute. 'Scram — while I'm in a good mood.' The old fellow bent and effortlessly lifted his chum to his feet. He said: 'Let me explain, old pal.' 'Shut up.' 'It's not you we are after. It's the Swede.' 'Get out of here before I change my mind.' I wiped my face and straightened myself out. I put the gun into my coat pocket, so I could get to it quickly, and went back into the bar. I wasn't going to be driving, so I quickly downed another whisky. Outside it was cold. I checked the car park for strangers but the cars were all empty. My driver was already at the wheel and waiting for me. 'Is there some kind of trouble?' he asked when I got into the back seat of the car. I suppose I was trembling or hyped up or dishevelled. I'm not sure what it was. 'You stupid bastard,' I said. 'You'd sit drinking your bloody orange juice while the opposition wasted me, wouldn't you?' 'What happened?' 'Forget it,' I said. 'Next time stick to Scotch; that citric acid you are drinking is eating up your brain.' The driver was an ex-cop. He was supposed to be guarding the passengers he carried. That's what he was paid to do.

Suddenly all the strength went out of me and I slumped back in my seat. Perhaps I had overreacted to the two men. I often over-reacted. It was why I had stayed alive so long. But neither of the two had been armed, except for the knuckleduster. I wondered what they intended to do and who might have sent them. If they were really looking for the Swede, what sort of racket were they in with him? We reached outer London as darkness cane. The outward-bound traffic lanes were jammed with commuters going home. I spotted a flower shop still open. On impulse I stopped the car, went in and had them send to Gloria a dozen long-stem red roses. On the greetings tag I wrote 'How can I thank you enough?' I didn't sign it. At the time it seemed like a tender, restrained and appropriate way to say thanks.

*

The Department had a long-standing regulation about burglars. Any employee finding strange marks around the keyhole of their front door was obliged to call the Duty Officer before proceeding inside. Of course no one obeyed this inconvenient and draconian order. It had been drafted after a female typist: left some official papers on the underground train, and invented a story about her apartment in Fulham being broken into. No one believed her story except a simpleton named Henry Tiptree, the investigating officer, who drafted the new regulation as a way to justify the time and money he wasted asking everyone working for London Underground a lot of stupid questions. I didn't do anything like that when I got back home and found the door was not double-locked. I turned the key very quietly and opened the door very slowly. Poking my head inside the door, I heard a movement upstairs. I closed the door behind me and then tiptoed up the stairs. I moved along the bedroom corridor. 'Oh, you made me jump!' 'Jesus, Fi! I thought you were a burglar!' 'What a lovely greeting, darling. You always know the right thing to say.' Fiona was standing in the doorway of the tiny dressing-room that had become a boxroom and storeroom too. She was holding up a black cocktail dress, as if trying to decide whether to consign it to Oxfam.

Behind her, our largest suitcase was balanced on the roll-away bed where her sister had often slept after fighting with her husband George. I put away my gun and went and kissed her. She smiled and kissed me back, but she did it without relinquishing her hold on the dress. 'Are you all right, darling?' she asked. 'You look funny.' 'I thought you were in Rome,' I said. 'I was. Now I'm off to Düsseldorf. Dicky can't do the European Community Security Conference and Bret says someone has to be there to wave the flag.' She leaned over her suitcase to count the packets of tights and added an extra one. 'When do you have to be there?' 'I came back to get more clothes. And I'm having my rough notes printed out and spiral-bound, to look impressive. I'm going to the office to pick them up . . .' She looked at her watch. 'My God! Is that the time? I'll never catch the plane.' 'Did you hear about the bus accident? Billy's school? The football team.' 'Yes. Billy sent me a fax, and the office sent it on to me. I had my girl phone the office and tell you. Why did you go rushing down there, darling? You had everyone at the office worried. And it's bad for the children if you make a crisis out of every little thing.' 'You phoned?' 'No. I just told you: my girl phoned. I didn't want you to worry.' 'A fax?' 'Billy sent Daddy a fax about the crash as soon as it happened. He often faxes them from the school office. Daddy fixed it up with the house master. And Daddy told Billy that unless he sent me a fax at least once a week he'd get no pocket-money. It's worked wonders, I must say. Daddy's awfully clever with the children.' She picked up a cobalt-blue party dress and held it against her, and then did the same with a dark green one. 'Which one do you think, darling?' 'A bit formal, aren't they?' 'These European people always have a rather grand dinner and ball on the last night.' 'The green one,' I said. 'You looked lovely in that at Dicky's the other night.' 'It is pretty, isn't it? But the shoes that go with it are getting scuffed.' She put the green dress back into the wardrobe and packed the blue dress in her suitcase. 'When are you due back in Berlin?'

'They want me here in London for that meeting tomorrow and another on Tuesday.' 'Unless George says; something startling there will be very few items on the agenda,' she said. The D-G will be there, and Bret is chairing it. It's a hot potato. I think they want to fix lead weights on it, and drop it into the archives. Dicky is encouraging the idea that the sooner the whole Polish fiasco is forgotten, the better it will be for everyone. And that means forgetting George's activities too.' 'You saw George? Will they release him?' 'Even the D-G can't make that decision alone, but yes I think they'll let him go. "Five" may guess we're holding him but they can't be sure. In any case they probably won't make difficulties, providing he comes clean and then goes straight back to Switzerland and keeps stumm.' 'How can you be so confident that Five will agree?' 'I asked around.' 'You know people at Five that well?' From her tone of voice it sounded as if Fiona disapproved of my having friends in the Security Service. I smiled and didn't answer. 'Don't be disloyal to the Department, darling,' she said in that throaty tone that I have always found so seductive. 'Nothing is more important than that.' 'No,' I said. 'Nothing is more important than that.' 'I only asked,' said Fiona quickly and defensively. 'I'm not going to report you to the D-G, or Internal Security,' she added sarcastically. 'Why do they want you there? Doesn't Frank usually come over for those policy meetings? Something bad?' 'My role is to say yes to everything. Then, when it all goes wrong, Frank can say I never told him.' 'And will it all go wrong?' 'I don't know,' I said. 'And I don't much care.' I went into the bedroom where I had spotted a cup of coffee Fiona had abandoned. I sipped some of it. For the first time I could say 'I don't care' with all my heart. I'd been suffering agonies of guilt about abandoning Fiona and taking the children with me, but now I shed those penitent feelings in a sudden joyful instant. I wouldn't be here to concern myself with how the review committee disposed of George Kosinski, and swept under the carpet their foul-ups in Poland and elsewhere. I couldn't any longer worry how Fiona, and her egoistic father, arranged their lives. I wouldn't be a part of their lives any longer, and neither would my children.

I know I shouldn't have felt resentment or envy that Billy had been sending a regular fax letter to his mother, but couldn't it have been arranged without the threat of withdrawing his pocketmoney? And couldn't there have been a copy forwarded to me? No matter. When I had Billy and Sally to myself I'd make sure I did the right thing for Fiona, and even for her parents. And I would have Gloria too, if everything went according to plan. I looked at the next room, and at Fiona standing under the merciless bare bulb that lit it. She was trying to close the lid of her suitcase upon a tall pile of beautifully folded clothes interleaved with white tissue paper. She was kneeling on the rollaway bed, pushing down on the lid of the case with all her might, but she couldn't get it closed. Unaware that I was watching her, she gave a scarcely audible sob that combined anger with despair. There were tears shining on her cheeks and her eyes were bright and mad. Was she worn out, just frazzled, angry and bordering on the hysterical due to her worries about the work she did, and her unremitting schedule? Or was this a glimpse into her real mental state? 'Are you all right, darling?' I called from the bedroom without letting her know I had seen her break down and cry. Slowly she got to her feet and came at snail's pace to the door. She leaned an arm against the door-frame and whispered: 'Would you mind helping me, darling? I never can seem to close it.' She never could seem to close it because she put ten times as many clothes into the case as it was designed to hold. And like all women, she thought that all it needed was a man's weight and muscle to shut and lock it. It never occurred to her that the hinges were being strained to breaking-point. I got the case and put it on the floor. After a struggle, I got it closed and locked. 'You'd better put a strap round it,' I said. 'You've put far too much into it. One of these days it's going to burst open and scatter your silk panties across the carousel.' 'Don't be silly, darling. I've cut back to the bare minimum; I should have my low-heel shoes, my new hat and some more woollens really. Düsseldorf will be cold at this time of year,' she added with unanswerable logic. Then, on the carpet at her feet, she noticed the fabric flower, a white camellia that must have fallen off her Chanel dress when I was trying to get the case closed. She picked it up, and as she pretended to smell it she looked at me and smiled. She had restored herself, wiped her tears and polished her smile. She picked up a hairbrush and began putting it through her hair in a way she used to do every evening before she went to bed.

What had happened to her after she defected; during those terrible years when she was a double-agent? She seldom talked of it, but once she'd confided that the worst part was the interrogation that took place when she first arrived over there. The Soviets have many skilled interrogators; it is a talent born of their sort of paranoia. And there would be no relaxation of their rigour even when they were questioning 'a heroine of the battle for socialism'. It was a lonely business, she said, and then changed it to being a solitary business. 'But after surviving those endless questions I never felt really lonely again,' she'd told me. 'I often felt isolated and sometimes I felt forsaken, but: I never felt lonely. I knew I was lucky just to have survived it.' Poor Fiona. 'A penny for your thoughts, darling,' she said. 'Nothing,' I said, and before I had to invent a lie the phone rang. I was nearest, and when I answered it the night-duty clerk told me that the car was on its way. When I relayed this message to Fiona she emphatically denied that it could be for her. 'I have no car. Bret's driver is taking me to the airport. I think I'll phone and ask him to bring the typed report with him from the office. No, it can't be anyone for me, darling.' 'Who is the car for?' I asked the duty clerk. 'For you, Mr Samson. Mr Rensselaer and Mr Cruyer will be collecting you in five minutes. Would you please go downstairs and wait for them. It's very urgent, they said. Very very urgent.'

6 Mayfair, London 'Who is it? Bernard? Good! Put your skates on and hurry on down. I'm in a car at your front door and it's urgent. Urgent.' It was Dicky Cruyer's reedy voice on the apartment's door-phone speaker. I had only put the phone down two minutes before, and now he was at my door. He was taking no chances on my finding a way to escape him. 'What's happened?' I said into the door phone. 'Yes, I know you've had a long day, Bernard. We all have. Jump to it, there's a good chap.' I felt like pointing out that Dicky's long days were invariably punctuated by leisurely lunches followed sometimes by a post-prandial doze in his office with the 'meeting in progress' sign switched on. Fiona was toying with the fabric camellia, wondering perhaps whether to ask me to open the case again. She looked at me as I hung up. 'Dicky,' I said. 'He's downstairs, waiting for me.' 'It's late,' she said. 'Do you know what it might be?' I asked. She shook her head. I unlocked my desk and got the VP70 pistol that had proved so useful against: the hoodlums. It was a bit on the heavy side, but used with a soft holster it was a nice smooth gun that didn't rip the linings from my jackets. She watched me test it and check the magazine but didn't comment. Things had changed; there was a time when the sight of me packing a gun brought out all her anxieties. I said: 'I'll be off then.' 'Goodbye, darling,' she said. 'I'll miss you.' She held her arms out to me. We embraced and I kissed her. 'Have a safe trip,' I said. She shivered. 'Oh, I forgot,' she said into my ear as if cooing songs of love. That silly girl . . . the one Dicky has given me as a temporary secretary, opened one of your letters.' 'Was it anything exciting?' I said, still holding her tightly.

The bank. You were terribly overdrawn. Three thousand and something . . . and four hundred . . . I forget exactly how much. I transferred some money from my account to tide you over.' 'You shouldn't have done that,' I said. 'I have back-pay due . . . overdue, in fact.' 'We are not so rich we want to pay those bloodsuckers any more bank overdrafts,' she said. 'Or are we?' Thanks,' I said. There's no need to give me so much housekeeping money. Not while you are in Berlin.' 'You are my wife,' I said doggedly. 'I worry about you,' she said. 'Daddy gives me more money than I need. And it must be terribly expensive for you in Germany with the mark going up and up.' 'I manage.' 'I wish I could be with you.' Her fingers explored my waist. 'You've lost weight.' I turned my head and looked into her moist eyes. It was never easy to know exactly what was in her mind. Perhaps that was why she was able to hold her own among all those inscrutable public-school ruffians. I was not convinced by her wish. Why should she want to be with me? She'd be confirmed as permanent Deputy Europe within a month or two. No woman had ever got that high on the promotion ladder. Perhaps she guessed what was in my mind, for after what seemed ages she said: 'Do you love me, Bernard?' 'Yes, I love you.' It was true. I loved her no less than I had always loved her. The only difference was that now I loved Gloria too and, no matter how I tried, I couldn't stop thinking of her. Take care, darling.' Waiting for me in the street there was a black Rolls-Royce with three whip antennas. It was not a new car; it was tall and angular, built in those days before every Rolls wanted to squat down and look like a Mercedes. The driver opened the door for me. 'Jump in,' said Dicky, indicating the little folding jumpseat upon which he had been resting his boots. It was warm inside the car, the engine was purring away and the heater was on. Dicky slumped on the black leather back seat with Bret Rensselaer in the far corner. Bret nodded to me. He was hunched stiffly against the arm rest in a dark suit, charcoal-grey tie, starched white shirt and gleaming black Oxfords neatly laced. His face was dejected and his hands clasped as if in prayer. The sleek Rolls belonged to Bret: elderly, respected, formal and

waxen, like the man himself. Like some other American Anglophiles I'd met, Bret had an obsession with renowned old English motor-cars if they had an extra long wheelbase and elaborate custom-made coachwork with brass fittings and silk tassels. Dicky was wearing scrubbed jeans, and a dark blue cable-knit sweater, the collar of his denim shirt just visible above the neck of it. The way he now rested one leg across his knee revealed the cleated sole of his stylish cross-country boot. Bundled alongside him on the seat he had his leather jacket. It looked as if Bret had picked him up from home at short notice. 'What's the problem?' I asked as the driver started the engine and pulled away. 'You'll see,' said Dicky. 'One of your pals is the problem . . .' 'We don't know,' said Bret, speaking over Dicky's voice with an irritable tone that made Dicky dry up, look contrite, and chew a fingernail energetically, as if trying to press the words back into his mouth. For a few minutes neither of them spoke. 'Are we driving around the park until the spirits try to contact us?' I said. Bret gave his famous fleeting smile. But within a few minutes the car had emerged from Park Lane, passed Buckingham Palace and was heading south. 'Special Branch are there. Five are there too. It will be a Goddamned circus. I don't want any part of it, unless you need my clout. You and Dicky go inside and look. We'll park around the corner; I'll stay in the car.' 'Look at what?' I said. 'A body,' said Bret. 'They are getting impatient. They will move him as soon as you've had a chance to look. They will have made photos and taken all the measurements by the time we arrive.' 'One of our people?' 'That's what Five claim,' said Bret. They say one of their people recognized him.' 'He was carrying a gun,' said Dicky. 'Maybe a gun,' conceded Bret. 'I had conflicting reports about the gun.' 'A field agent?' I asked. I wondered why they wouldn't just tell me all they knew, but I could see they were both disturbed by it. Dicky was wringing his hands with occasional interludes while he chewed his nails. Bret looked drawn, breathless and stiff. The desk people seldom came

into contact with the blood and snot of the Department. Any sudden reminder that they weren't working in Treasury or Agriculture came as a nasty shock. 'It's not Harry Strang, is it?' 'Harry Strang?' Dicky's cry was scoffing in tone. 'Why should it be Harry Strang?' 'I don't know,' I said. 'You do come out with some ideas, Bernard. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that brainbox of yours.' He gave a brief mirthless chuckle and glanced at Bret, who was looking out of the window. 'Harry Strang,